AS A child I woke to All Hallows Eve, as we called what most know as Halloween, in a churning combination of fear and excitement. I still do in truth and this night, as I write, still brings with it a frisson of nervous anticipation.

Until I came to France I could never be alone in my own house until well after midnight on Halloween, and friends knew this as well as they knew I liked my wine red and my music soulful. Perhaps you have to be brought up in an Irish city once described by travel writer HV Morton as the most haunted in Europe.

Even in my childhood, locals still stepped into the streets of Kilkenny when midnight struck, so that the souls of the departed could keep to an unfettered route on the pavements.

There were priests who returned to altars, having died with a mass unfulfilled, and haunted the abbeys and churches with the plaintive cry of: "Will anyone here hear my mass?"

If answer came there none they returned to who knows where to repeat the action over and over again in hope of response when they could then rest in peace, all duties done.

The devil himself was walled up in a certain castle after he joined a card game and was spotted only by his cloven hoof. Indeed he seemed to have a merry time in our city and countryside for I knew many a tale of his unwanted appearance on hunt or in grounds.

Steeped in that symbiotic mix of Catholicism and paganism which was the lot of the Irish, I happily accepted fairies on the same level as the ghosts of my ancestors returning each October 31. But our fairies were not the floaty, ethereal maidens of English folklore cavorting under golden boughs, making flower garlands.

No, ours were dark, dangerous creatures, mischievous at best, evil at worst, as they gave payback if feeling slighted or ignored.

Cattle would die in the fields, barns would burn and house pets would suddenly run in frenzied circles before collapsing in exhaustion.

So, when in the country, on the advice of the couple that ran a farm for my grandfather, I made sure to leave out saucers of milk and other little offerings from the table in hopes of placating them.

I chatted to them constantly when out in the barns or riding my pony that I knew, by his occasional shying, was seeing them when I could not.

The dogs too would point them out by their sudden trembling and odd howl.

I feared the fairies’ rage far more than the idea of the souls returning to whisper in my ear. And it seemed entirely normal on this night to sit looking into the magic cloudscapes and cities formed in the huge open fire as the adults told the old familiar ghost stories of our land.

When taken to bed before the witching hour and knowing, as was custom, all doors would be left unlocked in case a returnee preferred to enter that way, I would say so many prayers for the repose of souls I would fall asleep still reciting.

My family disdained but understood the country folks’ way of sitting by their named graves on this night, lighting candles and talking of the year past and the one to come.

Peasant communities worldwide retain this tradition in one form or another.

I long lost the seamless mix of old and new world when I left Ireland and went to a land where spirituality existed only in cold silence or church itself and learned to keep my talk of fairies and ghosts within the house.

And then, many years later, I came to La France Profonde and to an area made bloody and marked by battles and conquests from long before the Romans made their mark. Here, once again, I felt how thin on certain days is the veil between heaven and earth.

Here, as I’ve written before, when lying out on summer days when the heat thickens, almost throbs, there is a sense that if one is quick enough and turns, there will be a formation of Roman troops passing to their encampment at Balignac, or perhaps Eleanor or Henry’s court moving through in a blaze of colour.

On such days, past, present and future fuse in a neverending circle, all existing at the same time; so close and yet forever just out of reach.

Tomorrow, as they do year after year, my neighbours will go to graves and mausoleums of their long dead families. They will cover them with pots of the flowers of the dead, chrysanthemums, and tidy up the weeds that have grown and remove the old wilted flowers.

In this fiercely secular country they will keep to old Catholic traditions and pagan superstitions, although many have lost or forgotten exactly why they do so.

Should any old farmer return here tonight I will mentally wish him well but turn the television up that little bit louder and then, long, long past midnight I will go up to bed.

I will not look back over my shoulder.