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Halloween Symbols – Ghosts, Bats, Broomsticks and more!

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We’ve come to know Halloween as a time to dress up and go out trick or treating, or host a family party.  Halloween’s practices and symbols have breathed new life into a few dark practices of ancient civilizations.  Many Halloween symbols are familiar to peoples scattered across the globe, but every group does take new meaning into each Halloween symbol and gives it their own kind of spin.  Some believe that a symbol represents thrills and chills while others believe that some of the symbols mean death or that they are either scary, or life affirming.

Amongst some believers, these symbols are evil and representative of an occult and satanic world.  It all depends on what culture people are from and what they have come to believe as the truth.  Some images are a mixed bag and can come from something like the fantasy Dungeons and Dragons, Aztec art, Tarot cards, and ads for Halloween costumes and accessories.  Halloween symbols are popular and have lasted for generations, as well as appearing to be here to stay.  Halloween can be a spiritual war for some and scary, but good fun, for others.

Bats

Bats are harmless creatures and these mammals actually fly.  They eat a lot of insects such as mosquitoes and their appetites can be ravenous.  One bat, the vampire bat, drinks flood — usually from cattle.  Vampires are reputed to be able to change into a bat at will, hence the name.  Some bats will only eat fruit.  In Eastern countries, bats can represent good luck.  There is an interesting bat exhibit at Disney’s Animal Kingdom at Disneyworld.  Visitors may walk through and observe bats (or not) and learn a lot about this night creature’s habits.

Broomstick

This has long been associated with bats and was used to great effect in Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.  No matter how hard he tried, poor Mickey Mouse soon became inundated with water because all of the brooms kept multiplying and carrying buckets of water!  With the popularity of Harry Potter books and movies, broomsticks are more popular than ever, especially for a good game of Quidditch!

Black Cat

In both Japan and Western cultures, a black cat can be linked to either white or black magic.  For today’s Halloween décor they are most often seen on porches alongside of pumpkins, and made from curly black plastic!

Blood

Gore has always fascinated people in  a spooky way and many Halloween themed movies and books really play it up.  Knives, in horror movies, seem to produce the most amount of blood and chills and thrills.  People need blood to live so that could be why vampires are popular at Halloween time as they just love blood!  A fear of losing blood and then dying is at the core of people’s chills when around vampires and their kin.

Evil or Spooky Eye

Both Harry Potter fans and many cultures around the world consider an evil eye a bad sign.  Most everyone knows what an Eye of Horus looks like and it has come to symbolize the Ancient Egyptian culture.  Evil eyes have been featured in a lot of Halloween and other horror movies for decades.

Ghosts

Ghosts are the quintessential Halloween symbol and kids love to dress up as ghosts, while adults can be a lot of different ghostly types such as pirates, dead brides (Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas), and many others.  Ghosts can also come in different shapes and sizes and be seen or not, or even half seen out of the corner of your eye.  They have also been caught on films about the paranormal.

Pumpkins or jack-o-lanterns are the universally recognized symbol of Halloween in both Europe and America.  In the British isles, jack-o-lanterns were made from turnips or gourds.  When children go out trick or treating, a plastic pumpkin container is usually their container of choice.

Halloween Symbols

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The calendar flips to October, the leaves begin to change their color and suddenly the decorations for Halloween begin to go up. Even if someone had no idea what Halloween was, they would know it was coming up and be able to gauge from the Halloween symbols that it is a spooky holiday. Certain things have come to represent Halloween either because of tradition and legend or just due to their connection to the macabre.

Individual Halloween Symbols

Some popular Halloween symbols include witches, ghosts, spiders, bats, vampires, skeletons, graves, jack-o’-lanterns, black cats and monsters. With a holiday that dates back to the Celts and the Druids, it is bound to have picked up some stories and traditions along the way. Though many things that have become symbolic to the holiday because of rituals related to the day, some just tie in to the spooky element.

Jack-’o’-Lanterns – This has become one of many popular Halloween symbols as well as rituals and traditions. The jack-o’-lantern has become a great representation of Halloween since families often come together to choose their pumpkins as well as prepare them for the final look. Yet few know the supposed Irish folklore origin of this carved pumpkin.

It basically has to do with a stingy man named Jack who tricked the Devil not once but twice in order to prevent the Devil from taking his soul. After Jack’s death Heaven refused him and Hell couldn’t take him because of the agreement. The Devil sent Jack on his way back to where he came from with only an ever-burning ember from the flames of hell to light his way. Needing something to carry this hot coal in, Jack found a turnip and carved himself a lantern. Irish immigrants quickly discovered pumpkins and thought that would make a much better candle holder to carry on their tradition than a turnip.

Witches – These familiar Halloween symbols pop up everywhere for the season, from decorations to greeting cards to Halloween costume parties, and for good reason. Witches have been around for eons and were often thought to have mystical powers, partly because of their connection to Satan or the spirit world. Their most notorious gatherings were thought to happen during the two major season changes on April 30 and, of course, October 31.

Spells would be cast, witches brews boiled, and these creatures would often change their shape during the witchcraft meetings. They flew on broomsticks, gathered around cauldrons, made potions involving toads and kept black cats as pets, leading to all of these items or images to become Halloween symbols as well.

Bats – While actually not vicious, evil or terrifying at all, bats have become a familiar symbol tied to Halloween. Much of this is to blame on vampire bats, who do suck blood, but just enough for survival without usually killing another animal, such as a cow. Since most vampire tales claim that these mythological creatures transform into bats for flight and to enter places with greater ease, bats have become a symbol of evil and all things ghoulish.

Bats have also been linked to witches, either flying about from their caves while witches perform their ritualistic ceremonies or for actually becoming part of a witch’s brew. Bat wings, blood and other parts have been famous for being part of the recipes for witch’s spells or options to give themselves the ability to fly, along with other not-so-nice things.

Spiders – These arachnids have become part of Halloween imagery because of their connections to witches as well as abandoned haunted houses. Witches were thought to invite spiders into their homes as pets, companions or for use in potions. They are often affiliated with the extra creepiness one might find in the overhead corners of dilapidated houses of haunts or horrors. Not to mention, the stories tied to writing spiders. It is thought that if a writing spider spins your name in its web, you are destined for death in the near future.

Death and the Celts – It would be impossible to list each one of the many Halloween symbols, as well as their meaning. Consider that many things that can be a representation of the old Celtic festivity known as Samhain, the original Halloween, or death conjures up holiday themes. Halloween costumes, for example, have been used since the first Samhains though the original disguises were animal skins.

The connection to death also brings to mind plenty of images, especially skeletons and ghosts. Anything that could be considered spooky and relate to death, including graves and cemeteries, are bound to be perfect subject matter for creating Halloween symbols.

Animals Linked to, or That Symbolize Halloween

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Black cats are one of the symbols of Halloween and have gotten a bad rap a few hundred years ago, when they were associated with witches.  Due to ignorance and fear about diseases such as the Bubonic Plague and how they were spread (fleas on rats), and because cats in general were not much liked, the Black Death spread and decimated thousands upon thousands of people.  If the cats could have been left to do their natural thing — hunt rodents — all may have been prevented.

Cats still retain that imagery of Halloween and black ones in particular — although today, black cats are more likely to be sitting in the front window, curious about trick or treaters walking by on the sidewalk, than be involved in all of that “tom foolery”.

Few people even today, can truly say they love vampire bats.  They have been linked to Halloween, especially after Bram Stoker’s Dracula was written and loved as a great horror story by the Victorians.  After vampires came to be associated with Halloween, some true incidents were dug up that appeared to relate to or further symbolize Halloween.  A bloodthirsty Vlad the Impaler loved to put his enemies’ heads onto spikes surrounding his castle and these acts further added to the vampire lore.  Vampires and Count Dracula are reputed to be able to turn into bats and escape.  The real vampire bat does drink blood, but in small amounts and usually from cattle or goats.

In old Hebrew legends there was a woman who turned into an owl and preyed upon infants and expectant mothers.  The Greek shad a tale of monsters who loved the dark as well as dining on children.  There’s another strange tale, this one from India of a creature who liked to hang upside down during daylight hours, and who had no blood of its own.  Naturally, it had to get blood from other living beings.  Being drained of blood by a bat or vampire (in legend) tends to lend it to Halloween tales and associations.

Real vampire bats have a chemical in their saliva which prevents blood from clotting, and this is so they can “dine” longer.  Most bays do not carry rabies and most eat insects,  Wild bats are not encouraged as pets and the Organization for Bat Conservation does their best to spread knowledge about these flying mammals.

Wolves used to be common in Europe and during the 1500s, villagers in Germany found both half eaten humans and farm animals lying around.  They thought that wolves were the hunters.  When they tracked down a certain wolf, it turned into a werewolf and became someone they knew from the village.  A pamphlet was made to describe this event and this is how the werewolf came into our imaginations and legends.  There have been tall tales of wolves and bats and vampires and who knows what else mixing it up in epic battles, down through the ages.

Wolves howl at the moon and are hunters by nature.  They are cunning and intelligent and our first domesticated dogs may have been, or come from wolves.  At times, wolves were believed to be associated with the devil. There is conflict between property owners and wolves some of the time and the animal has faced extinction.  It has slowly returned due to releases from captive breeding populations.

People in the middle ages ate bread made from a hallucinogenic grain.  This may have led them to think that certain villagers had turned into wolves and become werewolves, especially on a night lit by a full moon.  Wolves howl as communication to other pack members and as a warning to non-pack members.  Wolf-dog hybrids are not encouraged.

Haunted houses are home to lots of spiders — very large spiders.  Most of them are made from latex or rubber, but the spider has long been linked to Halloween.  There are many types of spiders and they come in  a large variety of sizes and colors.  A large tarantula relative eats birds.  Most humans fear spiders, although most spiders are beneficial to humans.  In England, a spider in the house meant good luck.  Spiders can grow their legs back. There are way more than 35,000 species of spiders in the world.

One other animal that symbolize Halloween is a snake.  They are most often feared because a lot are venomous and people have died from snake bites.  Some are constrictors and huge, like pythons and anacondas.  Most snakes are beneficial to humans in that they keep a check on the rodent and insect populations.

Animals That Symbolize Halloween

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Animals that symbolize Halloween have become associated with Halloween over the generations to end up being a large part of the holiday. It could have something to do with the fact that the first Halloween “costumes” were animal skins worn by the Celts. More than likely, they have just been picked along the way because of individual animal’s connection to certain things that represent the scary or the supernatural.

Generally, most of the critters that have come to symbolize Halloween are nocturnal. This seemed fitting for being connected to evil spirits, witches or vampires who rule the night. Cats, bats and owls have all been linked to things that go bump in the night, especially during Halloween.

Black Cats = Animals That Symbolize Halloween

This symbol has become so tied into Halloween tradition and the occult that owners of black cats are advised to keep their pets indoors for a few days prior to Halloween so they are not stolen. Pet shelters and cat rescue groups will not adopt out the onyx haired felines for up to a week before the holiday. Black cats are even part of the superstition that if one crosses your path, you will have bad luck or even die.

Cats have been given a bad rap since being linked to witches. Folklore has made these creatures pets or “familiars” of witches throughout history. This link is so intertwined that, during the witch trials, cats were often killed for being evil just as the reported witches were. Ironically, some stories claimed witches would sacrifice these animals during rituals or kill them to use in brews for spells and curses. That is the main reason frogs get linked to witches and Halloween, as well.

Bats and Halloween

There are a few reasons these winged creatures have become linked to Halloween and all things otherworldly. The first is the presence of bats during the very first Halloweens. It is said that during Samhain, the original Halloween, great bonfires were built to ward away evil spirits. Because fires attract bugs and bugs attract bats, there was a great presence of bats during these activities. It was viewed that the bats were connected to the spirit world trying to get through, but still frightened off by the roaring flames.

The other reason bats have become a symbol of evil is their connection to vampires. Since early stories of Dracula and vampires have often included bats, in one way or another, they have long been thought of as evil as well. Vampires were thought to turn into bats to fly through the night and be able to get into rooms with great ease. It was also thought that bats would live in the high arches of castles where vampires resided. By the way, these critters turn up in witches’ brew recipes as well.

Owls and the Halloween Connection

Found hidden deep in the tree branches of dark woods, late into the night that haunting screech can be the only thing one hears. While it may be pleasant now, imagine walking a dark wooded path alone long before modern times. This could be a very unsettling noise. A reminder you are not alone and yet unable to see the creature making sounds nearby.

Like bats, owls would take flight during those first Samhain events. They would fly close enough to the fires to snag bugs, or lower for rodents, and seemed to be linked to the spirit world. Like cats, owls have also been connected to witches for being their companions. It doesn’t help that a witch in a Grimm’s fairy tale does transform into an owl.

Crows and the Macabre 

It is almost safe to say that if an animal comes in all black, it could be considered linked to the supernatural and scary. Crows have long been thought to become present to represent a bad omen. This could be why this creature has come to symbolize Halloween. Also, they are sometimes believed to be companions of witches and certainly a common part of their brews to cast spells.

A group of crows circling overhead, called a murder actually, has become a tale of superstition claiming someone will die. Of course there are plenty of cultures and folklore that consider a single crow or a murder of crows to be good luck, but when it comes to Halloween, crows are seen as devious. Edgar Allan Poe may not have helped the matter with his classic chilling poetic account of “The Raven” who comes knocking, knocking at his chamber door.

There are other animals that symbolize Halloween, but these are some of the more traditional and common ones.