How Bats Became Synonymous With Halloween
Dr. Emily Zarka of the PBS series Monstrum visited the largest urban bat colony in North America, which sits under the Ann Richards Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, to talk about why bats have become so synonymous with Halloween. Fear, for one, did much of the work.
We’ve always had a habit of turning the things we don’t understand into monsters. In early Christianity, bats were associated with the Devil, casting these innocent animals into symbols of duplicity and darkness. In the Bible, God forbade Moses and his people from eating bats, deeming them unclean. Over the centuries, the idea of uncleanliness was often reinterpreted as moral corruption, which helped cast bats into an evil light.
The association also comes from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which gave bats a starring role.
But it was Dracula, published in 1897, that put the proverbial nail in the coffin of bats as vampires. Bram Stoker doomed bats forever when he gave Dracula the ability to shapeshift into a bat and carry out his nefarious deeds in disguise, showing his unworldly nature and firmly solidifying bats with vampires.
Ancient Celtic lore also contributed to the reputation, particularly around Samhain.
The tradition of Samhain is veryold, going back to the ancient Celts of Ireland and Britain, likely originating over 2,000 years ago….These texts describe Samhain as a time when otherworldly spirits and the dead could cross into the human world. …massive bonfires were part of the tradition. …insects swarming the light from the bonfires would naturally attract more bats, who darted and swooped overhead of the revelers. Imagine villagers seeing the silhouetted bats flicker in the glow at exactly the time when spirits were believed to cross into the human world.
