Show Notes
In 1899, Halloween was so destructive in parts of America that grown men sat outside their homes with shotguns, waiting for the pranksters to arrive.
People stole gates, overturned outhouses, tore up sidewalks, and sometimes set property on fire.
Halloween wasn't the family-friendly celebration we recognize today.
And in Hiawatha, Kansas, one woman had finally had enough.
Her name was Elizabeth Krebs. She was a Swiss immigrant, a gardener, and a mother who had buried three of her four children. After years of watching Halloween vandals destroy the flowers she cared for, she decided to do something about it.
In 1912, she convinced her town to replace the destruction with costumes, music, prizes, and a community celebration.
But the story of America's oldest Halloween traditions isn't quite as straightforward as the town's commemorative plaques suggest.
And just up the road, in a local cemetery, another extraordinary story was taking shape: a grieving widower spending his fortune on eleven marble statues of himself and his dead wife.
Tonight, we're heading to Hiawatha, Kansas, for the woman who helped tame Halloween, a century-old argument over who celebrated it first, and one of America's strangest monuments to love and loss.
Welcome to Day Eleven 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.