What is Halloween Without the Bats?

I don't like bats. As a matter of fact, I am terrified of them. When I was five years old my parents bought their first house in one of those cookie cutter neighborhoods where all the houses looked the same...and everyone knew everyone else's business. It was a great place for a kid to grow up, though....because this was one of those neighborhood's of "first homes". And for that very reason I grew up with lots of kids...in a safe neighborhood where Halloween was loads of fun, and kids could be kids. I am blessed to have lived in such a time and place...and to have experienced the fun things of childhood that sadly seem to have passed to the wayside...at least here in the city they have. But, chatting about my childhood Halloween's was not my purpose today. Today, I wanted to talk about bats...those lovely creatures of the night.

When I reached my early teens, my parents bought a new house. By then, most of the kids I had grown up with had already moved away...and a new group of first-time home owners with their young babes had taken their place. Life is a cycle you know...birth, death, and regeneration. Even neighborhoods go through it. So, my parents had bought this big, old house way back in what we used to call "the sticks". Don't know what it is called today, but in those days it was living far away from the rest of civilization. There were a few homes nearby, but nothing like what I was used to. And because we were in "the sticks" there was lots of woodland around us and few streetlights. Going out for a peaceful walk in the evening was just about impossible...if you were afraid of bats, like me. Because they were always there from the dusk on. Whenever you looked up, they were soaring above. Oh, what a scary sight! I remember that I couldn't walk on the street at night without covering my hair...always afraid that they would get tangled up in there...and then what? I was literally terrified to walk the streets at night.

But, bats, just as everything else in this world, have their place and their day of fame---Halloween-- for what would the night be like without those nasty little critters fluttering about in the skies...always alert and eager to zoom down upon their unsuspecting victims and suck their blood. But, did you know?????....

That if a bat flies into your home, it is a sign that the ghosts are about....and come to think about it,...maybe it was the ghost who let the bat in.

If bats come out early and fly around playfully, it is a sign that good weather is in the forcast.

Bats hitting a building are an omen of rain.

Bats flying near people means someone is trying to bewitch them.

Early Christians believed that the devil turned into a bat to harass people and that witches shapeshifted into bats.

To most Orientals, bats are good luck and bring happiness and peace.

The Scots believed that when a flying bat rises and descends, it does so near a witch's home.

Ancient Native American tribes believed that the bat's power was strong medicine.