The Mexican holiday of Dias de los Muertos is a mix of Mesoamerican, European, and Spanish cultures and religions. According to History.com, the tradition is that “the gates of heaven are opened at midnight on October 31 and the spirits of children can rejoin their families for 24 hours. The spirits of adults can do the same on November 2.” On the Day of the Dead, families will visit the graves of their deceased family members to leave gifts or set up altars in their homes where they can make offerings to help their deceased relatives reach their final resting places.
Our fears and interest in death are understandable. It’s the one thing we can’t control and really don’t know all that much about. Is it any surprise that in multiple cultures we see the existence of the undead or immortal beings who have somehow cheated death? It was one of the fun things for me to investigate when I wrote The Calling is Reborn vampire novel series. There were just so many types of vampires in other cultures. In the Americas, we have the chupacabra and I had a blast incorporating my version of a chupacabra in Devotion Calls. In that story, a police detective has to help protect a women’s shelter from a mysterious attacker. What he doesn’t know is that she’s a vampire and the attacker is a sewer-dwelling creature that I modelled after a chupacabra. You can find out more about Devotion Calls at http://bit.ly/DevotionCalls.
