Halloween is around the corner, and pumpkin decorations line front porches and candy aisles fill grocery stores. Many of our lighthearted Halloween traditions — like dressing up in costume, trick-or-treating, and carving pumpkins — originated from spiritual practices. 

During the Celtic festival of Samhain, people wore disguises to ward off roaming spirits. Centuries later in England, All Souls’ Day introduced the custom of “souling,” where children went door-to-door requesting soul cakes in exchange for prayers for deceased relatives. In the U.S., Irish immigrants transformed the tradition of carving jack-o'-lanterns from root vegetables into carving pumpkins to ward off the wandering spirit of “Stingy Jack.”

Closer to home, many in Las Vegas also celebrate Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead at dozens of events in the community. The Mexican holiday welcomes back the souls of loved ones with traditional sugar skulls and colorful ofrendas, or altars decorated with marigolds, candles, and food.

For students who love learning about folk traditions that influence society today, UNLV offers a bewitching class that spans global cultures across human history.

The Course: Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion

Taught in the Department of Anthropology, ANTH 420: Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion explores how people experience belief and provides frameworks for understanding the relationship between cosmology, religion, science, and personhood around the world.

Who’s teaching it?

The class is taught this semester by anthropology professor Liam Frink. Frink, who also founded UNLV’s Office of Undergraduate Research, is an advocate for higher education with a passion for student learning and student engagement drives every class. 

Frink says, “What excites me most about this class (and all the classes I teach) is the environment of learning.” He adds that students in class often share personal stories that directly connect to the learning material. 

“I really believe in how we can develop ideas and social integration. I really believe in that and the power of education,” he says.

Why is it being taught?

While similar courses exist at higher education institutions nationwide, UNLV’s version was introduced by the late William R. Jankowiak, Barrick Distinguished Professor of Anthropology.

The course has continued to be wildly popular with students, likely due to its mix of personal and academic blending.

Who’s taking it and how does it work?

The lecture and discussion format is fairly standard, but the content is anything but. Nearly 100 students across a broad range of age groups and backgrounds enroll in this course each semester. Students are often surprised by lively discussions that make up each class, and Frink develops an open-minded, empathetic, and respectful environment that helps students feel comfortable sharing their personal experiences and connecting them to the academic literature.

Much of the course’s content directly resonates with the students. Frink shares that one of his students this semester is a bruja (a practitioner of traditional magic in Latin American, Caribbean, and Spanish-speaking cultures), while another’s auntie is a curandera (a traditional healer who uses herbs, eggs, and cleansing rituals to clear negative energy). For students raised in various religious traditions, the class offers a thoughtful space to analyze their own belief systems and appreciate the vast range of beliefs around the world.

“We’re not going for what is real and what is not real. That’s not what this is about,” Frink says, “This class is about the impact of belief and what your story looks like.”

How does this course connect to students’ future careers?

Frink says that the course teaches leveraging skills that are applicable in any field, like communication and writing. And in a culture that can feel divisive and polarized, the course also teaches students how to handle beliefs outside of their comfort zone.

“If you encounter something that’s different, you can be yourself, believe what you believe, and still see what other people do,” he says, “It can be a way we bridge one another’s ideas and practices — what a great skill in any workplace.” 

What can a layperson take away from this course?

It is easy to assume distant ancestors held primitive beliefs and lived simple lives, but Frink uses his courses to deconstruct that myth. “We’re so much more similar than we are different,” he says.

Magic, witchcraft, and religion served — and continue to serve — vital, practical purposes, Frink says. As an example: “When we think of shamans or alternative healers, it’s what we've been doing as a human community for a long time. A lot of that is about healing community through trauma.”

One of Frink’s mentors at University of Wisconsin, Madison, Frank Solomon, taught him to think of magic and religion as the way people interact with each other and the supernatural; religion gives communities a way to ground through grief. “It's kind of like a gift that our brains were given to create social bonds through those hard times,” Frink says.

Are there any ghost stories in this class?

Frink’s answer is an enthusiastic yes. “We get great ghost stories … and we also deconstruct ghost stories. We talk about ghost hunters and the economics of ghosts. But also, people really love to tell their stories of ghosts and the supernatural in their lives,” he says.

He also shares a personal spooky story. When he was young, his family toured a large, three-story house with a laundry chute that went directly into the basement. “I went up to the very top floor and I remember looking down into the chute. Behind me, I thought someone was going to push me over — and that I was going to die. I can still feel the tingle. I shot out of there like a bad idea.”

Years later, he shared the story with his no-nonsense, Midwestern parents. 

It turns out, they had that exact same spirit feeling too.

The reading list:

For anyone interested in better understanding the mystical, Frink recommends these books by anthropologists:

• Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics of Violent Death by Neil Whitehead
• The Social Life of Spirits by Ruy Blanes and Diana Espírito Santo
• The Life and Hard Times of a Korean Shaman: Of Tales and Telling Tales by Laurel Kendall
• In Sorcery’s Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship among the Songhay of Niger by Paul Stoller and Cheryl Olkes
• Spirited Histories: Technologies, Media, and Trauma in Paranormal Chile (The Anthropology of History) by Diana Espírito Santo
• How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others by T.M. Luhrmann