There’s something about autumn that makes me feel a little bit more… magical. I don’t know if it’s the cooler evenings, the changing leaves, the fact that it gets dark earlier or simply the approach of Halloween, but there’s definitely something about this time of year that makes me want to light candles, curl up on the sofa and watch something wonderfully spooky. And by spooky, I don’t necessarily mean horror. Give me a good paranormal series, a story about a haunted house, something about witches, psychic abilities, séances or unexplained phenomena and I’m happy. In fact, I’m probably very happy. These are the sorts of things I can happily disappear down a rabbit hole with for hours.
I’ve always been fascinated by the possibility that there might be more to our world than we can see. I’m not someone who thinks we should believe absolutely everything we’re told, either. Quite the opposite, actually. I love questioning things. I love hearing people’s experiences and then wondering what on earth might have happened. Was there a perfectly rational explanation? Was it something we simply don’t understand yet? Or could there really be something else going on? That little question mark is where the fun is for me, and autumn seems like the perfect time to embrace it.
There’s actually a lovely reason why this season has become so closely connected with the supernatural. Long before Halloween became an excuse to dress up, carve pumpkins and eat far too many sweets, this time of year was associated with seasonal change, death and rebirth, and the boundary between one part of the year and another. Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival traditionally celebrated around the end of October and beginning of November, is often associated with the idea that the boundary between the living and the dead became thinner at this time. It was a imaginal period – a time between one state and another.
And honestly, I can see why that idea has stuck around. There’s something inherently liminal about autumn. Summer is over, but winter hasn’t quite arrived. The trees are changing. The evenings are changing. Even the light feels different. Everything is in transition, and perhaps that’s why we naturally start thinking about things that are a little deeper and more mysterious. Or maybe it’s because we’re all secretly witches. I mean, think about it. We light candles when it gets dark. We collect crystals and little objects that mean something to us. We make wishes. We read tarot cards. We look at the moon. We talk about intuition. We tell ghost stories. We wonder about dreams and whether they might mean something. We have little rituals that we do without even necessarily thinking of them as rituals.
Humans have been doing things like this for thousands of years, and I find that absolutely fascinating. Of course, there’s a huge difference between something being an ancient tradition or a personal spiritual belief and something being scientifically proven. I think it’s important to acknowledge that. But I don’t think you have to choose between being curious and being sceptical. You can be both. You can watch a programme about a séance and think, “That is absolutely fascinating,” without deciding that every person who claims to communicate with the dead must be telling the truth. You can be interested in psychic abilities without accepting every psychic claim you come across. You can love witchcraft and magical traditions while still wondering what might actually be happening underneath it all. Personally, I think that’s much more interesting than simply deciding that everything is either completely real or completely nonsense.
Because what if we don’t know? There are still so many things about consciousness, intuition, dreams and even our own minds that we don’t fully understand. And then there are all those strange experiences people have had throughout history – seeing apparitions, having unexplained feelings about people or places, experiencing coincidences that seem almost impossible, feeling that they’ve communicated with someone who has died. I’m fascinated by the stories, and I love the fact that there are so many different ways of exploring them.
This is one of the reasons I was particularly excited when Gaia got in touch with me about its Autumn Season of Magick collection. It feels like someone has basically gathered together a whole load of the things I would naturally end up searching for anyway and put them in one place. Season of Magick brings together films, series and documentaries exploring witchcraft and ritual, psychic and intuitive abilities, spirits and séances, paranormal phenomena, the afterlife, channeling and multidimensional contact.
There are programmes such as Coven, Halloween Spooktacular, hosted by George Noory, and The Daily Wick with That Glasgow Witch. And honestly, just reading through the subjects included in the collection made me want to put my pyjamas on, make a cup of tea and settle in for an evening of magical rabbit holes, which, let’s be honest, is pretty much my idea of heaven.
What I particularly like is that you don’t have to approach any of this from one particular perspective. You can be spiritual, curious, sceptical, fascinated by folklore or simply someone who really enjoys a good supernatural story. And this is the time of year for it. There’s something about watching paranormal programmes when it’s dark outside that makes them about ten times better. You could watch exactly the same documentary at two o’clock on a sunny afternoon and it wouldn’t have quite the same effect. But put it on at nine o’clock at night, turn off the main lights, light a few candles and suddenly you’re wondering whether that noise you just heard downstairs was actually the cat. Although, in my house, it probably is the cat (or my creaking wooden ceiling!). Still, you never know.
I think that’s why I love the supernatural so much. It’s not necessarily about being frightened. For me, it’s about that delicious feeling of not quite knowing. The possibility. The mystery. That tiny little part of your brain that whispers, “But what if…?” And perhaps that’s something we could all do with a little more of.
We’re so used to having answers instantly these days. If we don’t know something, we Google it. If we see something strange, we look for an explanation. If we’re curious about something, we can usually find hundreds of opinions within seconds. But there’s something lovely about allowing yourself to sit with a mystery for a while. You don’t have to solve everything. You don’t have to decide what you believe. Sometimes it’s enough just to be curious.
So, with autumn approaching and Halloween waiting around the corner, I’m definitely going to be embracing all of this. More candles, more cosy evenings, more moon watching, more spooky films, more paranormal rabbit holes and quite possibly a lot more time disappearing into documentaries about things that I absolutely cannot explain. If you’d like to join me this Autumn, Gaia’s Season of Magick is a rather lovely place to start. New members who are eligible can try Gaia with a 7-day free trial, which gives you access to its library, including the Season of Magick collection.
And if you do find yourself, this Autumn, watching something at 10pm about ghosts, séances or multidimensional contact while everyone else in the house is asleep, just remember that I never said it was a good idea. I only said it was interesting.
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