The Sluagh: beware the swarm
Our 21st century Halloween might seem crammed with terror, as vampires, ghouls, zombies and werewolves roam at will. Yet this traditional cast of monsters spend the night of Samhain prowling the earth beneath a moonlit shadow — the crescent-shaped swarm of the airborne nightmare known as the Sluagh na Marbh: Host of the Dead.
Trapped between the earth and the heavenly realm, these rootless spirits take the form of savage birds, flocking to prey upon every vulnerable living thing from domestic pets and herds of livestock to wayward children and humans lingering on their deathbeds.
It was said that no lone individual was safe when the Sluagh flew, with victims sometimes plucked from the ground, tortured and dumped on barren ground miles from home.
According to Celtic mythology, these merciless fiends were forbidden a joyous afterlife, condemned to inhabit a kind of pagan purgatory, where unforgiven souls gathered in a malevolent throng, emerging to wreak havoc on the mortals below. Unrelenting in their violence, it was claimed on the Isle of Barra that Sluagh would sometimes forsake human prey, turning upon each other instead, in battles that sent streaks of their crimson blood raining from the sky to stain the rocks below. To this day the island landscape features stone formations with distinctive crimson stripes.
Irish country folk took severe precautions to secure their dark rural hamlets, while Scots in the Western Isles were said to barricade their west-facing windows in fear of the swooping fiends. Having said which, in October the temperature at midnight in the Outer Hebrides is usually about minus three, so common sense and superstition were on the same page for those canny islanders.
The Sluagh were accorded the kind of hypnotic mind-control we associate with vampiric possession, having the power to command men to follow them. These orders were notoriously impossible to disobey. Underlining the extreme nature of this occult phenomenon, Celts believed The Sluagh — also known as the horde or swarm — hunted for fun, and took sadistic pleasure in torturing abducted humans — a concept that reinforced their high status among the evil-doers of superstition. These were not just whimsical fantasies and bedtime stories but words of warning employed for purposes of social control in isolated communities where the family unit and survival were viewed as two sides of the same coin.
Like all our feasts and festivals passed down through the generations, Samhain, now known as Halloween, approaches carrying its familiar baggage of the ancient and the outdated; ghoulish and ghostly. But the images in our minds are inherited too and persist not just in memories but in our behaviour. In the summer of 2026, social media users began sharing images of the Ukraine/Russia war zone near the border of Poland. Popular clips showed Ukrainian drones attacking Russian military vehicles and buildings. The drones fly in swarms of up to two or three hundred, usually in the V-formation used by migrating geese. But as they approach their target, the swarm slows, collecting into the shape of a crescent moon before swooping to attack: the moment of greatest danger for those below.
In one sense a uniquely 21st century panic but also a ritual as old as time. Ancient Celts observing such a spectacle ran for cover, believing the dreaded Sluagh were on the hunt, spreading death and destruction across the land. It is only natural for us to gaze up in awe and fear because the symbol of the nocturnal crescent began with the universe itself. The glowing crescent in the sky is the shadow of planet earth cast on the face of the moon by the light of the sun. Since the dawn of history, this celestial display has served as a constant reminder of the eternal struggle between darkness and light, good and evil, and our weakness in the face of powers much greater ourselves.
