Have you ever heard of The Seven Sisters, also known as the Pleiades? It is a small constellation made up of seven stars that is shaped like a cluster of grapes. While this constellation is small, many people believe that the Pleiades has witnessed and foretells of many big things. Some people believe that a cataclysmic event, one that may have killed thousands maybe millions of people, happened while The Seven Sisters were in the sky. A few even believe that the world will end while The Seven Sisters shine overhead.

So what does this all have to do with Halloween? Well, if for some reason you found yourself on a deserted island without a calendar, you could still celebrate Halloween because the Pleiades is always right overhead during Halloween.

But what truly makes The Seven Sisters a sinister set of stars is the fact that not only is Halloween celebrated at this time, but so was an ancient Aztec ceremony involving a human sacrifice and the end of the world, a Celtic ceremony called Samhain when evil spirits would invade the earth and a Mexican holiday called Days of the Dead (da de los muertos). Ancient temples in Greece were built to be lined up with Pleiades. And so was a major Aztec temple. The Pleiades is even mentioned in the bible, in the book of Job and has a place in Brahman faith as the sparks from a god of fire. The set of stars is so widely mentioned and so often associated with death and destruction, that there are some who suspect that the Pleiades were overhead when a terrible event happened on Earth.

No one is quite sure what this event was, though some suspect that it may have been the great flood that is talked about in the Bible or perhaps the cataclysmic event that lead to the sinking of Atlantis. The Aztecs believed that the world had not been destroyed just once when the Pleiades were overhead, but rather four times. And that if a human sacrifice was not made once every 52 years (when their two calendars coincided), that the world would be once again destroyed while those seven stars looked down.

So this Halloween, when you are taking your kids out trick-or-treating or on your way to a costume party, make sure you stop for a moment and look up at the stars. See if you can locate the Seven Sisters overhead in the night sky. You might also want to stop and wonder what horrors that little cluster of stars has witnessed, and if they might witness a few more sometime in the future.