Ancient Web: Christine O’Keeffe’s Halloween Homepage Kept the Monsters in a Directory

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Christine O'Keeffe's Halloween homepage does not behave like a modern seasonal promotion. It is a doorway into an enormous hand-assembled directory of monsters, holiday customs, recipes, games, and folklore.

Visit Christine O'Keeffe's Halloween Home Page.

The home page carries a copyright beginning in 1997 and a later version date of October 29, 2014. It still shows an old GeoCities email address. Its menu includes Halloween History, a Monster and Faery List, E-Cards, Customs, Recipes, Games, Links, and a What's New page.

The monster and faery index is the most revealing room. It is organized by categories rather than search recommendations: hags, faery women, goblins, hobgoblins, death omens, werewolves, sea monsters, giants, birds, and the creatures of Celtic myth. Its lists include Black Annis, banshees, Nuckelavee, the Blue Men of the Minch, and the water horse.

A holiday website wanted to be a reference book

The index keeps expanding into Celtic goddesses, gods, places, charms, and imagined otherworlds. What looks like a small Halloween fan project quickly becomes a miniature mythology reference with dozens of entry points.

A separate Halloween History page traces possible connections among Samhain, Christian feast days, disguises, and seasonal observances. O'Keeffe includes numbered book and article references, notably publications from the 1980s and 1990s and a 1996 Usenet contribution.

Some of the historical simplifications on that page should be read as the author's account rather than the final word on the development of Halloween. Myths are presented within a collection intended for education and enjoyment; their inclusion is not a claim that supernatural creatures exist.

The site retains classic personal-web furniture: themed navigation graphics, a list of other holiday homepages, old contact details, and separate sections with their own version dates. The list of monsters carries an October 2010 revision date, while the history page still bears 2002.

That unevenness is part of the artifact. A person maintained favorite corners of a sprawling site when there was time, and the web kept the older corners available.

Explore the monster directory or return to the Halloween front page.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.