And times after, when smuggling was no more and the smugglers had become all but legends, and when the tide was just right, the village children would gather by the mouth of the cave at Halloween and make a candlelit pilgrimage through the tunnels and up into the cellars at the Nook. It was still going on when I came to live here with my aunt. We would bang on the door to the cellar, half wild with fear and excitement, and she would open it up and feign surprise to find us all standing there, cold and wet and smelling of the sea.

“Well!” she would say. “You’d better come up since you’re already here!” And up the stone cellar steps we tramped and into the tearoom, where she would have made toffee apples and ginger parkin enough to feed five thousand! We’d play bob-the-apple and snap-dragon and one of the fishermen would tell the tale of how Willow Bay got its name, making sure to add in plenty of lost souls and shrieking selkies.

Over time, the tunnel processions had to be abandoned; there were incidents, I’ll say no more about that. And what with the rock falls, soon nobody went into the tunnels even for dares. Halloween became altogether tamer and eventually it was decided that even snap-dragon was not really in keeping with health and safety—children poking their fingers into bowls of brandy-flaming raisins probably wasn’t ideal on many levels. But my goodness we had fun!

These days the costumes are a little fancier and the ghost stories a mite gentler, but the Willow Bay folk still do a braw Halloween. I don’t want you to feel pressure to keep the old ways going. Time must move on. And you, whoever you are, will have your own ideas about things.