There is something about October that makes the old stories easier to hear.
Maybe it is the way the leaves begin to turn, one hillside at a time. Maybe it is the coolness that settles into the evening air after a long, hot summer. Or maybe it is simply that autumn has always carried a little mystery with it — a feeling that the world we can see and the world we cannot are not quite as far apart as they usually seem.
We are through the first week of October now. The long days of summer have faded, and fall is beginning to shine in all its bright colors. The air has turned crisp. The evenings come earlier. There is woodsmoke somewhere in the distance, and the first cold nights remind us that winter is waiting just around the bend.
But for now, we have autumn.
We have pumpkins and hayrides and bonfires. We have sweaters pulled from the back of the closet and coffee poured into mugs that warm our hands. We have Halloween coming, with its ghosts and witches and jack‑o’-lanterns.
And, if you grew up where I did, we have the haints. My Great Gran and Pap loved talking about haints.
They would sit on the porch as the sun slipped down behind the ridge, drinking hot coffee to keep the chill from settling into their bones and telling stories about things that couldn’t always be explained.
There was never quite a straight line between the living and the dead in those stories.
The old people didn’t seem particularly interested in proving whether a ghost was real. They knew what they knew. They had lived long enough to understand that there were some things in this world you didn’t have to explain in order to respect.
October was a good month for such stories.
The old people spoke of the veil thinning between this world and the next. And perhaps that is why I wasn’t surprised when my Pap came to me in a dream last night.
I dreamed I was on a hayride.
Pap was driving the tractor.
It wasn’t simply a dream, though. It was a memory wearing a dream’s clothes.
When I was a little girl, Pap would pull the old tobacco wagon out, line it with hay bales and load up all the kids from the farm. We’d take the long way around the ridge toward Big Mandy, another farm my grandfather owned that wasn’t part of the original homestead.
The ride itself was an adventure.
We’d bounce along the old dirt roads, laughing and hollering, bundled up against the October air. We’d travel along a portion of the Jenny Wiley Trail that crosses our family’s land, and Pap would tell us stories about the land, the Native peoples, and the haints that lived in his telling of it.
Every so often, he’d turn around from the tractor seat with that big grin of his. That grin was the last thing I saw before I woke.
For a moment, I was little again.
I could almost feel the hay beneath me.
I could hear my cousins laughing.
I could smell the smoke from the fire waiting for us at Big Mandy, where we’d roast hot dogs and marshmallows until every belly was full and every child was tired from laughter.
And there was Pap.
Still driving.
Still telling stories.
Still turning around with that grin.
Maybe that is what we mean when we talk about the veil.
Not necessarily that ghosts come walking through our bedrooms in the middle of the night, although plenty of Appalachian folks would tell you not to rule it out.
Maybe the veil is thinner because autumn makes us remember.
My Great Gran was a woman who understood something about remembering. She treasured the things that had been left to her by the people who came before her. Sometimes she’d pull an old handkerchief from a drawer or a teacup from a cabinet, turn it over in her hands and tell me about the person it had belonged to.
And just like that, someone who had been gone for years was sitting right there with us. She remembered people as if she’d seen them yesterday.
She kept photographs of family members who had passed on, and when she’d flip through an old photo album, there was a story waiting behind nearly every face.
Some of those stories were sad.
Some were tender.
But many were funny.
Gran loved to laugh.
When she’d tell one of those stories that really got her going, her belly would jiggle with laughter, and before long I’d be laughing too — even if I hadn’t understood what was so funny in the beginning.
Some of my favorite memories of her are from the simplest fall days.
I’d rake — or more accurately, play in — the enormous piles of leaves in her yard, making them into something like swimming pools. I’d throw myself into them, disappearing beneath a mountain of red, gold and brown.
Gran would sit in her rocking chair on the porch and laugh right along with me. There wasn’t anything particularly extraordinary about it.
No celebration.
No special occasion.
Just a little girl jumping into a pile of leaves and an old woman laughing from her rocking chair.
But perhaps that is where some of the sacred things in life hide.
In the ordinary.
In the remembering.
In the laughing.
In the keeping of things.
I think about that now when I bring out pieces of my ancestors in the fall. I arrange old photographs. I set out things that belonged to people who came before me. Sometimes I add a candle or something from the land, and for a little while, I create a small place of remembrance.
I suppose you could call it an altar. My family never did.
There wasn’t a tradition in our house of creating an ancestor altar for autumn. Nobody taught me to do it. There was no ritual handed down from Great Gran to me.
And yet, somehow, it feels right. Maybe because I learned from her that an old photograph isn’t just a photograph.
An object isn’t just an object.
A story isn’t just a story.
They are doors.
They give us a way back.
Across the world, people have found their own ways of opening those doors.
In the ancient Celtic tradition of Samhain, the turning of the season marked the end of harvest and the beginning of the darker half of the year. It became associated with a time when the boundary between the living and the dead was believed to be especially permeable. Fires were lit, disguises were worn, and traditions developed around protecting oneself from — and sometimes appeasing — the supernatural beings believed to be near.
Some of those traditions eventually found their way, in altered form, into the Halloween we know today.
In Mexico and in Mexican communities throughout the world, Día de los Muertos offers another way of thinking about death and remembrance. Families create ofrendas, or altars, with photographs, favorite foods, candles, flowers and treasured possessions. Graves are visited. Stories are told. Music and food become part of remembering.
It isn’t simply a day for mourning. It is a celebration of the people who came before us.
And in Japan, Obon is a Buddhist tradition centered on honoring ancestors. Families visit graves, make offerings and gather together. In some traditions, welcoming fires are lit to guide ancestral spirits home, while fires at the end of the observance help guide them back.
Different places.
Different histories.
Different beliefs.
Yet there is something familiar in all of it.
We remember.
We make room.
We light a fire.
We set a place at the table.
We bring out the photographs.
We tell the stories again.
Maybe human beings have always understood that there is more than one way for someone to remain with us after they are gone.
Sometimes they remain in photographs.
Sometimes in recipes written in an old hand.
Sometimes in the way a person taught us to shell beans or mend a fence or make coffee.
Sometimes they remain in the things they left behind.
Sometimes they remain in the land itself.
And sometimes, apparently, they climb back onto an old tractor and drive us around the ridge in our dreams.
I don’t know what my dream meant.
I don’t know if Pap was visiting me, if my memory simply found its way through some unlocked door in my mind, or if there is a place where those explanations don’t need to be separated from one another.
I only know that when I woke, I could see his face.
That grin.
Clear as day.
And for a little while, my Pap was not a man who had been gone for years.
He was simply Pap.
Driving the tractor.
Taking us the long way around the ridge.
Heading toward Big Mandy.
Waiting for the fire, the hot dogs and marshmallows.
Waiting for the children to laugh.
Maybe that is the gift of October.
Before the leaves fall completely and the dark days of winter settle over the hills, autumn gives us one last season of remembering. It reminds us that the dead do not disappear simply because we can no longer see them.
They live in the stories we tell.
They live in the things they left behind.
They live in the land beneath our feet.
They live in the habits passed down through generations.
They live in the laughter we hear in our own voices and the expressions we recognize on our children’s faces.
And sometimes, on a cool October morning, they live in a dream.
Maybe the veil isn’t something we have to prove exists. Maybe sometimes it is simply the space we create for remembering.
A photograph placed where we can see it.
An old object turned over in our hands.
A story told for the hundredth time.
A pile of leaves that becomes a swimming pool.
A grandmother rocking on a porch and laughing at a little girl who thinks she’s swimming.
A grandfather turning around on a tractor with a grin.
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Maybe those are the places where the veil becomes thin enough for us to feel them again.
So I think I’ll let the veil stay thin for a while.
I’ll bring out the old photographs.
I’ll put the pieces of my ancestors where I can see them.
I’ll pour another cup of coffee.
I’ll sit on the porch when the sun begins to sink behind the ridge.
And if I happen to hear a tractor coming up the road, I think I’ll listen.
Just in case Pap is taking the long way around.
