Show Notes
Before Halloween meant costumes, candy, and smiling jack-o'-lanterns, it meant something considerably more dangerous.
When Irish and Scottish Halloween traditions crossed the Atlantic, they collided with American harvest parties, fortune-telling games, pumpkins, Victorian entertainment—and a growing tradition of October vandalism.
Kids blocked railroad tracks. Wagons ended up on barn roofs. Windows were smashed. False fire alarms were pulled. People were shot. And by the 1930s, some American cities were seriously considering getting rid of Halloween altogether.
Instead, they made a deal with the kids.
Give us something good, and nothing bad happens to your house.
This is the strange, occasionally violent story of how America created the Halloween we know today—and how three little words turned a night of chaos into a national tradition.
Welcome to Day Two of 31 Days of Halloween
More from Haunted American History
In 1967, the RMS Queen Mary arrived in Long Beach, California, after more than three decades crossing the Atlantic.
In Savannah, Georgia, ghost stories are everywhere.
On November 13, 1974, a young man ran into a bar in Amityville, New York, shouting that his parents had been shot.
In 1907, a wealthy Boston businessman named Thomas Lawson published a novel called Friday, the Thirteenth.
In 1891, a jeweler in Salem, Massachusetts, began selling a silver souvenir spoon decorated with a witch on a broomstick.