Walpurgis Night

Hang out the garlic and steep your soul in dread, for tonight the Devil walks with Earthly feet.



Tonight is Walpurgis Night (Germanic: "Walpurgisnacht") - half a year from Halloween - the very night which Bram Stoker chose to set into motion the events of Dracula.



Stoker: "Walpurgis Night was when, according to the belief of millions of people, the devil was abroad – when the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held revel."



Current writers also invoke the darkness of Walpurgis Night. In a BBC interview, J.K. Rowling spoke of her original name for what would become the Death Eaters that plagued Harry Potter. "They were called the Knights of Walpurgis", she said.

Read about Walpurgis Night, and its much happier (therefore less interesting) follow-up, May Day, in a post we published the last time we were suspended between Nosferatu and Primavera.