Samhain in the New World: The Celtic Secret of the Ozark Bluffs

F.K. Sterling came to Eureka Springs looking for fresh material. What he found was Rowan Kane — a sharp young anthropologist who introduced him to something far more dangerous than history.

Deep in the limestone bluffs lie stone chambers, precise astronomical alignments, and Ogham inscriptions that should not exist in North America. As Sterling follows Rowan through hidden shelters and forgotten archives, the evidence mounts: Celtic voyagers reached the Ozarks centuries before Columbus. But they did not come as explorers. They came as maintainers.

For over a thousand years, a small community performed functional rites at Samhain and the cross-quarter days — not mere celebration, but active maintenance of a negotiated boundary between the surface world and what has always lived below. The Moon-Eyed People of Cherokee tradition. The night dwellers. The primordial presence the Celts recognized from their own Fomorian lore.

Now the maintenance has faltered. The barrier is thinning. And as Samhain approaches, Sterling finds himself drawn into a living tradition that demands more than scholarship.

Blending rigorous fieldwork, Ogham analysis, Indigenous oral tradition, and creeping dread, *Samhain in the New World* is a haunting investigation into what the hills have kept — and what they will do when the keeping stops.