Sarah: Hello you beautiful creatures of the night. Welcome back to another episode of So Random and Weird Pod. It's October, the leaves are dying, the pumpkins are ratting on porches, and somewhere a grown adult is spending $90 on a 12-foot skeleton for their lawn. I'm Sarah. Sheena: And I'm Sheena and I'd like to state for the record that I would be the person with the twelve foot skeleton. His name would be Gerald. And he's very tall, very dead, and would be totally thriving. Sarah: Of course he is. So tonight we are digging up the history of the strangest holiday we have. Halloween. Where it came from. Sheena: Isn't I I would I would say like Easter's a bit more more strange. Sarah: True, true, well, yeah. But I mean we we have to find out like where it came from, who invented the things that we do and how we got from ancient bonfires and wandering spirits to fun size stickers. Sheena: Though fair warning, there will be dead people, devils, very bad t a very bad turnip, and some actual historical panic and at least one man who tried to push a buggy onto a haystack. Sarah: All true. So dim the lights, check behind the door, and whatever you do, don't answer if something knocks three times. Sheena: Unless it's a kid in a Spider Man costume. Then you pay the toll. It's the law. Or if it's a six foot four tattoo businessman I excuse me. Sarah: Right on, right on. Let's begin. All right. So let's start with a thought experiment. Imagine you've never heard of Halloween and I have to explain it to you. How do I do that without sounding completely unhinged? Sheena: Ooh Do it. You do it. You know you can do it. Sarah: Okay. So once a year, children put on masks, walk up to a stranger's homes in the dark, and basically threaten them. and then the strangers, they respond by handing over candy. Sheena: Which, if you think about it, is a shakedown. It's a protection racket run by third graders. Pay up where we ruin your porch. This is your Sarah: Yeah. Sheena: entryway into the mafia. Sarah: And that yeah, and that's the normal part. That's the normal part, okay? Then we carve faces into fruit and put candles inside them. Sheena: Technically a pumpkin is a fruit, yes. So we are performing surgery on produce and setting it on fire, which is the best part. Sarah: Exactly. And we decorate our front yards with tombstones and coffins, fake spider webs on the bushes, skeletons and lawn chairs. Sheena: Gerald would not be in a lawn chair. Gerald stands moving Sarah: Yeah. Sheena: over like I do most people, but yes, continue. Sarah: And we love it. We love it. We Sheena: Okay. Sarah: pay for haunted houses. We pay to be chased by a guy with a chainsaw that has no chain. We love scaring ourselves half to death. Sheena: Yeah, I can't say I I would be doing that, but I think that's the secret though to it all. It's the one night of the year where you get to be anyone you want. Anything you want a vampire, a witch, a banana, a vampire slayer. Sarah: Always yeah, always, yeah. I love the banana. And you know what? I actually just saw a costume where it was a hot dog and a mustard and a r and a ketchup bottle. Like there's three people. Fantastic. Sheena: Ha ha Sarah: So Sheena: So how did we get here? I'm still asking that question daily. But when did all of this Halloween stuff begin? Sarah: Well, let's take it back to the beginning. so to find the beginning we have to go back about 2,000 years to the Celts. They lived across what is now Ireland, United Kingdom, and northern France, and their calendar looked nothing like ours. Sheena: I love when history gives me a spreadsheet and it's terrifying. Sarah: So they divided the year into two halves. The light half, which was the warm season, when crops grew and the days were long, and then the dark half, when everything got cold and short and dangerous. And the day the dark half began was called Sawin. Sheena: Say it again for people at home because I know a lot of them have been saying it wrong in their heads. Sarah: Yeah, it's it's pronounced Sawin. So it is actually spelled S-A-M H A I N. It's not pronounced Samhain or you know Samhain or anything like that. There's an entire internet comment section that has been mispronouncing it in silence for years. Sheena: yeah, that reminds me of the episode of Supernatural where they say Sam Hain and I'm like No Sarah: You cringe, you cringe, you're like, no, it's not Samhain, it's not it's it's Sawin, Sao Win. It's it's it's it's yeah. Sheena: Mm-hmm. So I am reading a lot of silent shame in the room right now. So Salin starts on the night of october thirty first and runs into November first. The Celts celebrated with huge bonfires to welcome the new year. Sarah: And you have to understand what was at stake. We think of harvest time as pumpkin patches and hay rides and a nice cider donut. Sheena: Or potatoes if you live in Idaho. So Sarah: Yeah, and potatoes, yeah. Sheena: but I definitely do think about cider donuts. Sarah: Yep. I'm right. You know, I mean but for these people, l you know, harvest was life or death. If the food stores weren't enough, you didn't make it to spring. And at Soin, the harvest was over. Whatever you had, that was it. You know, the days were getting shorter, the nights were getting longer, and there may or may not be enough food to last the winter. Scary. Sheena: And imagine standing in the dark in a field in a world with no electricity and you're doing math about whether your family is going to starve or not. Sarah: Yeah, I mean these were incredibly scary times. Incredibly scary. Sheena: And that's before the ghosts, because the Celts also believed that at Salin that time and space went a little soft, a little timey-whymy. If you're a Doctor Who fam. The barrier between our world and the next one got thin. They called it the Veil. Sarah: The veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest. The dead could cross over into the world of the living, and vice versa. The living and the dead could commingle. Sheena: Which sounds like the worst networking event of all time or dating event. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Sheena: We'll give you a name tag, drink ticket and a dead grandfather. Sarah: That sounds hot. Sounds sexy. Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: And it it wasn't treated as a cute idea. There are old Irish stories about people who got lost or trapped in the other world on So and Night. So the tales are very consistent. You stay out late, you wander into the wrong field, you step inside the wrong ring of stones or mound of earth, whatever, and you don't come back. Or you do come back and a hundred years have passed. Sheena: So the lesson of Salwin, go home, be home, stay home. Sounds good. Sarah: Exactly. W yeah. Which is honestly still my favorite way to spend October thirty first. So yeah, just saying. Sheena: Now totally. Now the bonfires, people lit them on hilltops. Families would let their home fires go out, then relight them from the communal flame. That sounds weird. Anyways livestock were brought in from the pastures and some were slaughtered for winter stores. The word bonfire itself is often linked to bonfire because bones from the slaughter were sometimes burned in the flames. Very cozy, and the fire did a lot of jobs. It was warmth, it was light in the dark, it was protection against whatever was crossing the veil, and it drew something else to the party. Bats. Which is a funny little piece of history. Bonfires attract insects, insects attract bats, bats eat insects. So at the one night of the year when people were standing around huge bonfires in the dark, there were bats swooping overhead. Sarah: Those were probably the only times people really ever noticed bats, which is how they became a traditional Halloween symbol. They weren't spooky on their own, they were just guests at a very large insect buffet. Sheena: Corbats, their entire brand is built on a fireside snack run. So now history never leaves anything alone. So Salin didn't say Salwin. Sarah: Right. So in 43 b CE, the Romans invade and eventually take over much of the Celtic territory. And over the next few centuries, Roman festivals start mixing in with Celtic traditions. Sheena: And the Romans had a few holidays of their own for the dead. There's Feralia in late February, which was a day to honor the departed. There's Pomona, the goddess of fruit and trees. Her festival was around so the same time of year, which may be where apples entered the Halloween pictures. Sarah: So bobbing for apples, another tradition that, once you describe it, sounds like a punishment, you know, you put your face in a bucket of water and chase the fruit with your teeth. Sheena: Endurms. Sarah: Mm. You remember we did that in school, bobbing for apples in Mrs. Rainier's class. Sheena: Many of us Yes. Yes. Yes. And many of us have been to those parties with that bucket. Nobody washes their hair the same afterwards. Sarah: Yeah, yeah, it's it's definitely a germy mess. But yeah, so the Roman the Roman holiday that matters most for our story is Lemoria. it was a major pagan festival devoted to the restless dead. It was held in May over three nights and it wrapped up on May thirteenth. Households performed rituals to drive away hungry ghosts, and the head of the household would walk through the house at night barefoot, tossing black beans over his shoulder. Sheena: I'm sorry. They're tossing beans at ghosts. Sarah: Yes, yes. He's he's tossing beans at ghosts and repeating a phrase nine times to tell them to leave. Sheena: Well, in fairness, I've tried to get my family out of the house with less. though of Sarah: Yeah. Sheena: course I've never actually thrown the beans, but I have eaten the beans. Sarah: Yeah, eating beans will get them out, let me tell you. Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: my gosh. So and here's why Lemuria matters. So because the church was about to give it a makeover, rather than a stamp out like pagan festivals completely, they adopted them. I mean, that's smart, right? You know, if you wanna bring people, those pagan heathens into the church, let's, you know, kind of adopt their their holidays, their festivals. They reimagined it. You know, they they gave them new names and new meanings. Sheena: Which, to be honest, is kind of a smart idea. I mean, I get it. yeah, we do the same thing too. But but you know, you can't do that. So Ugh Sarah: you know, it's here's the timeline. So Lemoria is celebrated on May thirteenth, a day when the day are honored when the dead are honored, and in six nine AD, Pope Boniface the Fourth takes the Pantheon, the famous pagan temple in Rome, and consecrates it as a Christian church on May thirteenth. Sheena: That's the exact same day. That's not a coincidence. Sarah: Not even a little. May thirteenth becomes a Christian feast for the most holy of dead Christians, the martyrs and saints. All Saints Day. It was an attempt to Christianize the pagan festival, and notice that it kept one of the same themes going. It's still a day about honoring the dead, just a more respectable class of dead. Sheena: It's like when a bar gets bought out and rebranded as a wine bistro. Same building, same crowd, just a new menu. Sarah: and it was so popular that the church actually moved it. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory the third dedicated a chapel to the All Saints in Saint Peter's in in Saint Peter's in Rome, and the feast shifted to November first, which is the day right after Sauin. Sheena: You know, many historians read that as a deliberate move in hopes of draining the life out of the pagan festival of Sawan, and to be fair, scholars still argue about the motive and some point to practical reasons, like feeding all those pilgrims in the fall instead of the spring, but the timing is awfully convenient. Sarah: And All Saints Day has an old English name, All Hollows. Hollow means holy or saint, so the night before is All Hollows Eve or All Hollows evening. Sheena: Which gets slurred over centuries into Halloween Halloween? and then eventually Halloween. Sarah: So the most famous spooky night of the year is linguistically just the night before the Saints party. Sheena: It's like calling Christmas Eve Santa's pregame or the Super Bowl. Or the Super Bowl the Valentine's Day pregame. Sarah: It's exactly like that. And then around the year 1000, a French abbot named Odio of Cluny adds a third day, November 2nd, becomes All Souls Day, a day to pray for the souls of the dead. Which brings us to the next piece of the puzzle. All right. So Sheenum. Here's the part I find genuinely fascinating. The earliest ancestor of trick-or-treating starts in the Middle Ages. Sheena: are you gonna give me the cake story or the black plague story? Sarah: I'm going to give you the cake story. In the Middle Ages, the church taught a belief in purgatory, a place between heaven and hell where souls were stuck, waiting to be cleansed. And the idea was, if the living prayed hard enough, these souls could eventually fly up to heaven. Sheena: So you had this whole system where prayers were basically a rescue mission? Sarah: rescue mission, yeah. And the church asked wealthier patrons to pray for these trapped souls. But of course, not everyone had time or money or interest. So who steps in? Sheena: the poor unfortunate souls and children. Sarah: Exactly. On all Hollows Eve and into All Souls Day, children and poor people would go door to door in a custom called souling. They'd go begging for soul cake. Sheena: And soulcates are my personal favorite part of this whole story. They were little spiced cakes, sometimes with raisins in Ugh a bit like a small sweet bud. Sarah: Well you don't have to pray for the people like they gave you you know cakes with raisins in. I know you don't like raisins. Sheena: Mm-hmm. Sarah: anyway, the deal was, you give me a soul cake and I'll pray for the souls of your dead loved ones. Sheena: So from a certain angle, the most polite shakedown in history. Hello, ma'am. For a small cake I will help your dead grandmother get into heaven. Sarah: And there's even an old tradition that every cake a person ate represented a soul being released from purgatory. Sheena: that just makes me think about the scene in Matilda with the chocolate cake. How many people Sarah: God. Sheena: would that have released from well, we I guess we could all say that eating dessert is a spiritual act. Sarah: I would like that engraved on my gravestone. Thank you. Yes. Sheena: Now this is really the seed, costumed or not, you've got people going house to house on Halloween, asking for treats and giving something in return. It's not trick-or-treat yet, but it's the shape of it. Sarah: It's the great-great grandparents, who, by the way, didn't have fun size anything. Sheena: Hm, but they were more of one size than we are. Okay, Sarah: True, true. They were fun size. Yeah. Sheena: okay. Sarah, time for the figure who basically the is the mascot of Halloween. Let's talk about the witch. Sarah: So it and I'll warn people. This one gets dark. It starts funny because we've all got the image, you know? Green skin, the pointy hat, the broom, the cauldron. But the real story is not funny. Sheena: It never is. So in medieval Europe, people did believe in the devil. They believed in demons, they believed in witches who made deals with Satan and did terrible things like ruin crops, make cattle sick, or cause storms. Sarah: And if you genuinely believe that these evil forces are in the real world, then the logical conclusion is that you want to find them and stop them. Sheena: Which then leads to what historians call the Great European Witch Panic. It really takes off in the fifteen hundreds and sixteen hundreds, though there's a landmark in fourteen eighty seven when a book called The Malius Malificarum, aka the Hammer of the Witches, was published. It was basically a handbook for identifying and prosecuting witches. Sarah: A How to Guide for a Moral Panic. Sheena: the first satanic panic, if I may say. So Sarah: Yeah. True. Sheena: and over the next few centuries, tens of thousands of people were executed for witchcraft across Europe. Estimates vary, but you'll often often see figures somewhere around forty to sixty thousand. Sarah: And most of them were women. Sheena: Cal surprise. Sarah: yeah, exactly. And here's the part that really sticks with me. A lot of the time, these accused witches were actually the healers of the villages. Sheena: Yeah, they were the herbalists, the midwives, the women who knew which plant stopped a fever and which one made a baby come easier. Sarah: Think about it. If you have knowledge that other people don't and you can heal people, you can probably also hurt them. At least that's how the suspicion worked. Sheena: And then there was the profile. The woman who got accused or excuse me, the women who got accused were often the ones who lived alone, were widows, older women with no family to protect them, maybe a bit eccentric, maybe a bit outspoken, and maybe they just didn't go to church enough or behave properly. Sarah: So as the panic spread, more and more of these healers were accused of being witches, and all the every little day things in their lives started to look sinister. Sheena: Like a broom. Sarah: Like a broom. A completely ordinary household item. And the cauldron. Honestly, every household in medieval times had a cauldron. It was a very common cooking pot: soup, stew, whatever was on the fire. Sheena: So the iconic witch's cauldron is basically a Dutch oven with a bad reputation. Sarah: A Dutch oven with a bad reputation that is exactly what happened. And the hat. The pointed witch's hat is thought to be a variation on a typical countrywoman's hat of the era. Practical headwear for someone who works outside. Sheena: And it only becomes a witch hat later, once artists and storytellers need it shorthand. There are a few theories on exactly where the cone shake comes from, but the basic idea is that it started as ordinary clothing. Sarah: And then there's the black cat. Sheena: Hmm. Wonton is listening to this right now and he'd like to say he's innocent. Sarah: Cats are enigmatic. They stare, they disappear, they watch you from the dark with that look. And in medieval homes, cats hung out by the hearth and near the brooms. So when those homes became suspects, the cats also became suspects. Sheena: Yeah, there's also a papal letter from twelve thirty three from Pope Gregory the Ninth that linked black cats to devil worship. Not a great moment in feline public relations and he would have be getting whacked with the broom by me. Sarah: Yeah. And the cats have never forgiven us. Sheena: Of course, The Witch in America, the Salem trials in sixteen ninety two and ninety three, nineteen people were hanged, one man, Giles Corry, was pressed to death with stones for refusing to enter a plea, and several others died in jail. Sarah: It's one of the darkest chapters in early American history for sure. And it's not directly a Halloween event, but it burned the idea of the witch into the American imagination. Sheena: And the look of the witch keeps changing. In the nineteenth century the Halloween witch was old, hooked nose, warts, cackling, the classic hag. Sarah: But then in the twentieth century, something changes. Sheena: We got hot. Sarah: Witches got yes, witches got attractive. Suddenly they're glamorous and flirty and a little bit naughty. Sheena: Which is a major improvement. We went from she'll curse your cow to she's got great hair and a velvet cape. Sarah: And that gave Holly Halloween a little bit of a sensual edge, a little bit of a mischief and danger, which, as we'll see, becomes a theme. Sheena: So all right, let's pause for a moment because if we're gonna be honest about all of this, there is a thread running through everything we've talked about so far. Death That's what makes this holiday. Whether it's the threat of death from a bad harvest or the dead returning for at Salwin or souls stuck in purgatory or the persecution of witches. Sarah: It is all about death. And here's what I love about it. It's also about the end of one order and the beginning of a new one. The endless cycle of life and death and renewal. Live Wheel Sheena: It's the circle of life. Sarah: of Fortune. Okay. Copyright loss. Okay. Sheena: Okay. So the harvest ends, winter comes, and then eventually spring. Sarah: So Halloween isn't really a celebration of dying. It's a celebration of surviving it. We look the thing in the eye, we make it silly, we eat candy, and we get through the dark. Sheena: And that is the most hopeful thing anyone has ever said about a skeleton lawn decoration. Yeah. Sarah: Okay. All right. So Sheena, let's talk about masks. Okay. Where do they come from? Sheena: So there are a few threads. one goes back to the Celts, where there's a tradition of people dressing in disguise at Salin. The thinking of it was if spirits were roaming around, you didn't want them to recognize you, so you cover your face. Sarah: Hmm. Incognito for the afterlife. I like it. Sheena: Incognito indeed. I love that. And excuse me. In later centuries in places like Ireland and Scotland there was a custom called guising, where people would disguise themselves and go from house to house. Sarah: But there's another very human reason that the mask gets popular, and it's a little more rowdy. Sheena: All right, I'm interested. Go on. Sarah: So on All Hollows Eve, in the old days, you have these groups of beggars going door to door, and they've been drinking a lot. Sheena: Hm. Party. Sarah: Yeah, party. So they guzzle their share of alcohol and their demands for food and drink start to get more and more threatening. So what do you do if you're a person who's about to cause a little bit of trouble? Sheena: Ha you cover your face so butn' nobody knows it's you. Sarah: Exactly. Masks help to hide identities. Whether it's the spirits or the neighbors, nobody wants to be recognized. Sheena: And in Britain, it evolves. People start dressing in costumes and going to house to house, performing little plays. These were called mumming plays, and the performers were mummers. At the end of the performance they would be rewarded with food and drink and maybe a little money. Sarah: So it was kinda like caroling but with more swords and fewer carols. Hmm. Sheena: And a lot more sword fights. Seriously, a lot of mummers plays had a fight scene, and the doctor who revives the dead. Sarah: And there's another big British tradition that overlaps here, Guy Fawkes. Sheena: Yes, remember, remember the fifth of November, the gunpowder plot of sixteen five. A group of English conspirators tried to blow up parliament on november fifth. Guy Fawkes was caught guarding the gunpowder and the plot failed. Sarah: And England has been celebrating its failure ever since. Guy Fawkes night, November fifth, bonfires, fireworks, and effigies of Guy Fawkes. Kids would ask Pastor Byers for a penny for the guy. Sheena: Which is just trick or treating in a different hack. Sarah: A very different app. But the same energy. Same energy. Kids in costumes asking for something with a hint of a threat and a hint of fire. Sheena: And with the masks, there's something else going on. Masks do give you power. They give you a sense of safety. You're not you anymore. There are no rules. You can be anyone. Sarah: And that's the part of the mask that hasn't changed in thousands of years. It's permission. Sheena: Yeah, so alright. Here's something that might surprise you for a holiday. so full of ghosts. Ghosts actually join the Halloween tradition pretty late. Sarah: Which is wild because you'd think they'd be there they'd be there from the start. But the Hallmane Ghost as we know it, the sheet over the head, spooky specter, really takes off in America in the nineteenth century. Sheena: And it's tied to a very specific event, the American Civil War. Sarah: The Civil War, which ran from 1861 to 1865, killed an estimated six hundred thousand to seven hundred fifty thousand people. It's the deadliest war in American history. Sheena: And the way people died matters. A huge number of soldiers died far from home, on battlefields, in hospitals and in prisoner of war camps, and many of them were never identified, never properly buried, just mass buried, and never returned home to their families. Sarah: So you have a nation with this massive unresolved guilt grief, thousands of unclaimed, unknown, dead, families who never learned what happened to their sons. Sheena: And this created a huge sense of the unknown. Could they come back? Were they out there somewhere wandering, lost? Sarah: America became in a way obsessed with death. It's right around this time that spiritualism, the movement of seances and mediums, trying to talk to the dead, becomes hugely popular. It has started in eighteen forty eight with the Fox sisters, but the war supercharged it. Sheena: And some of the first Halloween ghost stories from America were about exactly this deceased Civil War soldiers coming back to haunt the living. Sarah: Which is deeply sad and deeply spooky at the same time. Sheena: And here's a good detail. ghosts as we picture them in a white sheet derived from winding sheets, or they were shrouds that corpses were traditionally draped in before the burial. Sarah: Mm. So the classic bed sheet ghost is literally a corpse in its own burial clothes. Sheena: Which makes every kid in a bedsheet with two eye holes very, very historically accurate. Sarah: And a little unsettling if you think about it. Sheena: And I'm going to think about it every year from now on. Thanks. Sarah: Anytime, friend, anytime. Alright. So around the same time as the Civil War, there's another big wave of tradition arriving in America. The Scots and the Irish. Sheena: And this is huge because the Irish especially brought Halloween with them. In the eighteen forties the Great Famine in Ireland killed about a million people and drove another million or so to immigrate. A lot of them came to the United States. Sarah: And with them they brought their customs, their stories, their folklore, and with those they established even more American Halloween traditions. Sheena: Now I'm gonna make sure on this because I'm going to save the bogey. Sarah: Yeah. The bogey. also called the boogeyman. Sheena: I actually love this part. The bogey was a sort of an amorphous pestering ghost, kind of like the Bogert in the show we shall not name. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. I mean he was a presence who loved to bother children. he'd hide under their beds, tap on windows, lurk by the gates. Sheena: Honestly, the bogey is every childhood fear all rolled into one. The thing under the bed, tapping at the window, and the shape at the end of y the yard. Sarah: And he's still around. You'll find him basically in every culture with a different name each time. Sheena: Parents have been using him to get kids to sleep for centuries. Go to bed or the boogeyman will get you or the monster under your bed will get you. Sarah: Well a truly timeless parenting technique. Not a good one, but a timeless one. Sheena: Yeah, we wonder where we got all of our traumas from. So Alright, so Zara, Sarah: Yeah really. I still jump into bed a little bit. Sheena: now we get to my favorite and unfavorite part because the jack o' lantern, because I hate pulling out the guts, but I do love pumpkin seeds. Sarah: Yeah, I I know that. I know. I know you've got a a tombstone shaped soft spot for this one. Sheena: I do. So the Jack o' Lanterns began as a European tradition, and here's the twist it wasn't a pumpkin. Sarah: Mm, it was a turnip. Sheena: It was a turnip. People in Ireland and Scotland carved faces into turnips, and sometimes beets and potatoes, and put a burning ember inside, because they didn't have pumpkins where they lived. And imagine imagine carving a turnip. They're like super dense, they're hard. It's like sculpting a bowling ball. Sarah: And why did they do it? Sheena: To ward off spirits, a creepy face with a glowing light, the idea was that it would scare away anything wandering around on Salwin just like a mask. Sarah: And there's a legend attached to it. The legend of a man named Jack. Stingy Sheena: Stingy Jack. Sarah: Jack. In the legend, Jack was a drunk and a trickster. And he tricked the devil more than once. He got the devil to climb up an apple tree, then carved a cross into the trunk so the devil couldn't climb down. Sheena: Hm. And he only let the devil go after making him promise never to take Jack's soul. Sarah: So when Jack died, heaven wouldn't take him because he was such a terrible person. And the devil wouldn't take him because, you know, of that promise. Sheena: So Jack was doomed to wander the dark between worlds forever. The devil tosses him a single burning coal to light his way, and Jack puts it inside a hollowed out turnip. Sarah: So the jack-o'-lantern, or the jack of the lantern or jack-o' lantern, is a soul wandering forever with a little light in a vegetable. Sheena: Which honestly is the saddest, most Irish thing I've ever heard. I'm trapped in the afterlife, but at least I've got a turn up. Sarah: Well then the Irish immigrate to America and they discover that there's a vegetable here that's much better for carving. Sheena: The pumpkin native to the Americas, big, kind of soft and hollow. It's like a gift, it's a factory made lantern. Sarah: And it doesn't take forty minutes in a chisel. Sheena: it takes about three hours and blood and a sacrifice. Sarah: Well for those of you who don't like it, yeah. Sheena: And the jack o' lantern shows up in the American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne mentions it jack-o' lanterns in the eighteen fifties, included in a story called Feathertop about a scarecrow brought to life and his head is a carved pumpkin. Sarah: And over time, people also started using jack-o'-lanterns for pranks, putting them on porches, on fence on fence posts, in windows, scaring the neighbors. Sheena: And here's something I find really cool. Look at the classic jack o' lantern face. The big toothy grin, the triangular nose. Sarah: That's a skull. Sheena: Totally a skull. The big grin still evokes the rictus of a of death's hand. The triangular nose hole is exactly where a skull's nose cavity is. Even if the face seems happier and a little goofy, it's still linked to death. Sarah: Exactly. So every October we're all just putting a candle inside a smiling skull on our front steps. Sheena: And I call it decorations, others call it festive. Sarah: Yeah. All right, so last fast forward. by the eighteen hundreds, Halloween has moved into cities and towns across America. And it's turning into a rowdy kids celebration. Sheena: Right, and here's something fun. At the turn of the twentieth century, something big happens in a way Americ in America in the way that Halloween looks. Artists start bringing together all scary things and linking them to the holiday. Sarah: Skeletons, spider webs, jack-o' lanterns, bats, black cats. Sheena: It's the era of the Halloween postcard, mass produced, brightly colored, a little eerie, a little cute. People mailed them to each other like greeting cards, which I think we need to start doing this. And illustrators like Ellen Clapsaddle made a career out of this. Sarah: It's basically the moment the visual brand of Halloween gets established. Before that, it was a mishmash of folk customs and I mean after that you had a look. Sheena: And the look hasn't really changed. If you f flip through a stack of po postcards from nineteen ten, you'd recognize the whole aesthetic immediately. Sarah: They invented the Pinterest board a hundred years earlier. Alright, Sheena: Mm-hmm. Sarah: TM. So now we're getting to the real chaos because at the turn of the 20th century, Halloween is getting very costly for property owners. Sheena: I know what this is. And this is my favorite part of the whole episode. Please tell me it's about the buggy. Sarah: Yes. The buggy. So back in the olden days when people had horse drawn buggies, the bigger kids would try to take someone's buggy and put it on a haystack. Sheena: On top of a haystack. Sarah: There's a famous photo of about half a dozen guys pushing a buggy up a haystack. It's the kind of prank that takes planning, teamwork, and absolutely no common sense. Sheena: Typical. And that's the cute version because pranks like this spread across cities like Chicago and Philadelphia and by the nineteen twenties Halloween was turning into a crisis in America. Sarah: Crisis. Seriously, the the tricks were really getting out of hand. Sheena: And these were not harmless. Some kids, mostly adolescent boys, would put bars of soap on the rails for the streetcars. Sarah: Which would make the streetcar slip and derail and people could get hurt. Sheena: They'd remove the front steps from someone's home so when the person walked outside they'd fall and get hurt. Sarah: They'd set fires, they'd throw stones through windows. Sheena: And in rural communities they take wagons apart, reassemble them on the roofs of houses, which I have to say is some very impressive carpentry. Sarah: Well, terrible, but you know, impressive. Sheena: Yeah. And then they'd also remove gates from fences so that farm animals would escape. Sarah: See, that one was so popular that the night before Halloween got its own name. Gate Knight or Mischief Knight or in some places Hell Knight. Sheena: Well, I've also heard Cabbage Knight and Devil's Knight. So honestly, Hell Knight is the most metal name for knight in history. Sarah: And it was all happening right around the Great Depression, which could have been an excuse for the troublemaking because of everything that was going on with the country at the time. Sheena: Right. People were poor, angry, out of work. A lot of young people had nothing to do and nowhere to go. I know where they can go. Dude the White House. Sarah: Yeah Well, nineteen thirty three comes around and it gets so bad the newspapers have labeled it Black Halloween. Nineteen thirty three. Sheena: Smash light bulbs, set fires, smash car windows, cities across the country dealing with destruction. Sarah: And police departments and a lot of regular citizens said, you know what? Enough. Done. We have to tame this holiday. Sheena: So what do you do when a holiday has gotten out of control? Sarah: Diversion. You give the kids something else to do. That's what I do with my autistic kiddo. You know, give some communities started inventing all kinds of activities to divert them. Town wide parties, costume competitions, games. Sheena: And here's one of my favorite details, guidebooks. They were called boogie books. And they were basically or would you say bogey books, maybe? Yeah. Sarah: ebooks, I think, yeah. With the with the one Sheena: Yeah. And they were basically Halloween planning guides that suggested ways of turning Halloween from a prank night into a party night. Sarah: And the company behind them was the Denison Manufacturing Company out of Fort out of Framingham, Massachusetts. They made paper goods, crate paper, party decorations. Sheena: And they were the first company to really understand that you can make hella money off Halloween. Sarah: Yeah, the first bogey book came out in like nineteen nine and they started putting out their own Halloween material. Noisemakers, masks, paper costumes. Sheena: And this was a big deal because it was the first time costumes were specifically made and marketed for Halloween. Before that everything had been homemade. Sarah: So I mean you throw together a costume out of whatever you had around the house, a sheet, some old clothes, soot on your face. Sheena: Eyeliner all over your face as a a beard. And Sarah: Mm-hmm. Sheena: then suddenly there's a store bought option. The paper costumes were a lot fancier than the homemade ones, but they had their drawbacks. Sarah: What were the drawbacks? Sheena: Well, besides the fact that you know paper was flammable. Sarah: Hmm, no. Sheena: There are newspaper clippings from the time noting that costumes were catching on fire, which reminds me of the 80s with the pajamas. The eighties and the nineties. Sarah: Yes, yes, Sheena: so that's a pretty big flaw on in a holiday that also features open flames in carved pumpkins. Sarah: So you've got children in paper costumes, carrying candles, walking up to porches that also have candles. Not gonna go wrong, right? Yeah. Yeah. Sheena: have you met me? Everything. Everything could go wrong. but thankfully more durable costumes started to appear. Sears sold it for its first box costumes around nineteen thirty and then it grew from there. Sarah: And where did the costume ideas come from? Characters from the comics, the funny papers, and radio shows. Sheena: Pop culture, basically, kids wanted to be what they were listening to and reading about. And later on, companies like Ben Cooper and Founded in the nineteen thirties, built a huge business on cheap plastic masks and smock style costumes of T V and movie characters. my gosh. Flashbacks. Sarah: Yeah, like the ones with the thin vinyl smock and the plastic face that make it hard to breathe through, you know. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Sheena: And that and that elastic string that like snapped halfway through or got stuck in your hair. Every kid in America has had that experience from the twentieth century. Sarah: Yep. And at the same time at the same time Halloween becomes a very social event. So I mean you're dressing up for parties, we're dressing you know, kids are dressing up for school parties, church parties, town wide parties, Halloween parades. Sheena: And there's some debate on this, but Allentown, Pennsylvania, may have had the first Halloween parade in nineteen five. Others soon followed. Tom's River, shout out. New Jersey. I spent a lot of time in T in in Tom's River. in nineteen ninety nineteen nineteen, they had their own Halloween. And then also Anokam, Minnesota in nineteen twenty. Sarah: And Anoka has held its Halloween parade every year since. So they actually have call they actually started calling themselves the Halloween capital of the world. Sheena: Which is a bold title since Halloween Town is technically in Oregon. but Sarah: Mm-hmm. Sheena: I guess they they kind of have earned it. And the story goes that the first Enoka celebration was meant to give local kids something to do instead of making trouble after a rough Halloween where, as the lore goes, somebody had moved a cow onto the roof of a building. Sarah: I love that one. A cow on the roof is is exactly the kind of crisis that gets a town to start planning parades. How Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: do you guys I can you imagine like a there's a cow on the roof. Okay. god. Sheena: Very very Minnesota. Don't you know? Sarah: yeah. Sheena: And that's the theme. The efforts to tame Halloween did work for the most part, but Halloween really needed something else. It needed a whole new tradition. Getting drunk at the bar in your sluttiest costume. I mean Sarah: You're right on, right on. No. Actually, here's a fact that surprises a lot of people. So trick-or-treating is new. It's less than a hundred years old. Sheena: Right, for a tradition that feels like it's been around forever, it's practically a toddler compared to everything else. Sarah: Exactly. And the term itself comes from the word trick, as in the pranks, the very destructive, mischievous kind, and at the same point someone came up with a very intelligent thought. Sheena: What if we bribe the pranksters and get them sugar high? Sarah: What if instead of having them go all over town being destructive, we just give them treats to shut them up? Right on, I'm all for that. Sheena: It's one of the It's one of the best pieces of public policy in history. Instead of fighting the problem, let's pay it in sugar. Sarah: And it worked. It so worked. The early treats were things like popcorn balls and candy. Apples were some of the very first treats, caramel apples, candy apples. Sheena: I'm I'm sure until the you know, raisins were a good thing until, you know, kids realized there was chocolate. Sarah: Well, no. I'm not there with reasons either, to be honest. Sheena: Now, remember this is back when people gave kids homemade things like caramel, apples, cookies, popcorn balls, raisins. Sarah: Raisins. You really don't like raisins, do you friend? So so when it does Sheena: I don't. And you have no you have no idea how many little boxes of raisins I've been given you for the years. Sarah: I d I know. And I I would hate the people that gave you this anyway. so when does the phrase trick or treat actually show up in print? There's a very early reference from nineteen twenty seven in a small newspaper in Blackie, Alberta, Canada. Sheena: But the version that really gets attention in the United States is in nineteen thirty nine. There's an article in American Home Magazine by a woman named Doris Hudson Moss. Sarah: And it was about this success she had hosting a Halloween open house for her kid for the kids in her neighborhood. And the kicker, she didn't get tricked. Sheena: She gave them sweets, and it all worked. Sarah: A one woman peace treaty made out of sugar. Hmm. Sheena: And the time in was almost unlucky because only a few years later World War Two hit and sugar rationing started in nineteen forty two. Tricker Street basically went on pause for a few years. Sarah: After the war, it came roaring back, and in the late nineteen forties and nineteen fifties, with the baby boom, it became a full cultural phenomenon, millions of kids walking around the suburbs in costumes. Sheena: And with the new tradition came new treats. Instead of homemade goodies, kids were now getting pre packaged candy bars, Mars bars, Reese's, Sarah: Mmm. Sheena: Hershey's Sarah: Ooh. And that, in a nutshell, is how Candy won over the destructive aspects of Halloween. Sheena: If only we could use that kind of conflict resolution. Sarah: Yeah, really. Although it it it it works for adolescents. You'd think it would work for others with adolescent mentalities. No, I'm not naming names. I think y'all know who I mean. McDonald's also apparently works too. Moving on. gosh. anyway, so yeah, so there's another piece of the candy story that deserves a mention. Candy corn. Sheena: Okay, so like I hate candy corn, but I Sarah: Mm. Sheena: love the smell of candy corn. Sarah: You know. Candied corn was invented in the eighteen hundreds I'm sorry, eighteen eighties, by a man named George Renninger, a candy maker in Philadelphia. It was originally marketed to farmers because it looked like a kernel of corn. Tastes like crap. Sheena: And somehow it it became the most controversial candy in America. Leave it to Philadelphia to be controversial. So people Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Sheena: either love it or they treat it like a biohazard. Sarah: Yeah. Ugh. But so I mean there's really no middle ground. You either say, I love candy corn or who hurt you? Sheena: And one more fun fact, in nineteen fifty a group of kids in Philadelphia started collecting coins for UNICEF while trick-or-treating. That became the trick-or-treat for UNICEF, which raised money for children around the world. Sarah: So trick-or-treating went from a protection racket to a charity fundraiser in about 30 years. Sheena: A truly impressive career arc. So then the next step. Where else to go? But Halloween goes to Hollywood. Sarah: Well, by the middle of the twentieth century, Halloween has become bigger and bigger. Millions of people are celebrating nationwide with festivals and parties and trick-or-treating. Sheena: And then the entertainment world notices. In nineteen sixty-six, Halloween hits the television with Charlie Brown goes trick-or-treating. Sarah: It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. It aired on CBS in October of nineteen sixty six. Sheena: So crazy. And it's still honestly like a perfect little special. Linus waiting in the pumpkin patch, Charlie Brown getting a rock. Sarah: I gotta rock, the most devastating Halloween line ever written. Sheena: Poor Charlie Brown, every kid on earth gets candy and he gets gravel. Sarah: Then, in 1978, a director named John Carpenter decides to try his hand at bringing Hollywood to the movies. And he makes a little movie called, appropriately, Halloween. Sheena: Excuse me. Sarah: Tail in the face. Sheena: And that was not the same cat. So Sarah: Huh. Sheena: and that's a big one. it was a low budget slasher film which was made about three hundred thousand dollars. And it has become one of the most successful independent Halloween films ever made. Sarah: Yeah. It brought a Halloween theme to the movies, but it also changed how we looked at Halloween masks. It broke new ground, spawned a franchise, and the series has grossed more than five hundred million dollars. Sheena: And here's the best part. You know the famous mask, the pale, blank, expressionless fa face. Sarah: Michael Myers. Sheena: Yes, and that mask is actually a Captain Kirk mask. A William Chatner mask painted white, with the hair teased out and the eye holes widened. Sarah: The most terrifying face in horror history is a modified Star Trek mask. Sheena: And it's i totally a fact that never stops being funny. To boldly go where no man has ever gone before. And also stabby stab. Sarah: Haha and today Michael Myers is still one of the most popular Halloween characters. Sheena: And there's something deeper going on. The idea of a masked stalker hounding young people on Halloween shifted the focus of the Hallow the holiday. before that, scary things were things that went bump in the night, supernatural things. Sarah: Yeah. I mean afterward the scary thing was a human villain, a person behind a mask. Sheena: And that's arguably scarier. A ghost is a story. A ghost is cold air. A guy in a mask can be your neighbor. Sarah: Exactly. It also helped to redefine what a you know an American mask could be. Scarier faces, scarred faces, faces that looked like they belonged in a nightmare. Sheena: And here's the cultural effect. By the sixties, Hollywood was really starting to dictate what kids were wore for Halloween. Their favorite movie characters, T V characters. Sarah: You wanted to be Batman or Wonder Woman or Spock or whoever was on T V that year. Sheena: and the costumes of the new millennium got more elaborate, more high end, loaded with accessories. Sarah: Yeah, far cry from the generic devils and ghosts and witches in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Sheena: And really there are no rules anymore when it comes to masks. They come from anything pop culture, you know, politics, religion. Sarah: Yeah. And that brings us to the next phase of Halloween. So over the past decade or so, more and more adults have been dressing up for Halloween. Sheena: And I'm gonna be honest, if I had the time for it, I would be one of them. I have very detailed costumes planned and already and don't don't question me on them. Sarah: I'll be dressing up this year. I'm so excited. So we'd love to hear about it later though, let me tell you. But the trend is seriously real. Halloween isn't just for kids anymore. It's for adults too. Sheena: Yeah, spending on Halloween in the United States is now above twelve billion dollars a year, according to the national retail federation. And a huge part of that is adults buying costumes, decorations, and candy for themselves. I mean guilty. Sarah: Yeah. I mean but that's part of the nostalgia, you know. I mean the kids who went trick-or-treating in the sixties and seventies and eighties are now grown up and they're dressing up more and more and going out with their kids and grandkids as an excuse to relive their childhood. Sheena: Or for those of us who don't have kids dressing up because we're weirdos. So right. Sarah: It's a chance to be someone else, you know, a different person different personality. Sheena: Yeah. And you know, for those with going out with their kids and grandkids, that's super sweet. It's a holiday that lets you be eight years old again with a legal drink in your hand. Sarah: Exactly. And you know what? Businesses and restaurants have noticed. They're catering more and more to adults at Halloween time. Themed cocktails, costume contents, haunt haunted bar crawls. Sheena: Okay, that's just not that's not just nostalgia. Halloween has become somewhat more of an adult only event, which I like. Sarah: Which brings us, mm, to a delicate topic, the costumes. Sheena: the costumes. A lot of Halloween costumes, at least for women, have become a lot more sexualized. Sarah: Like a sexy nurse, you got sexy witch, sexy zombie, sexy tavern wench. Hey, I'm gonna be sexy little red ridenhood this year. I'm just telling you right now. Sheena: Well, don't forget sexy hot dog, sexy crayon, sexy trafficone. It's there's also been like Sarah: Yeah, so Sheena: a condom or a sperm. It's gotten out of hand. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Sheena: There was even a famous line about this in the movie Mean Girls in two thousand four. wow. That excuse me, that hurt. Sarah: Yeah. Sheena: Which basically summed up the whole phenomenon. Sarah: And you could argue it's it's a little full circle, right? I mean, we started with the witch becoming a bit sensual and naughty in the twentieth century, and now we've got a whole industry built on it. Sheena: Yes, the winch went from healer of the village who got burned to death to sexy witch one size fits most unless you're tall. Sarah: It's quite Yeah, or plus size like me. No. That's quite the journey though, it really is. Sheena: It honestly, yeah. Whatever your costume is, the underlying idea is still the same as the Celts had. for one night you get to be someone else. Sarah: Exactly. Ugh, all right. So we do have to talk about the dark side of trick-or-treating. and I promise we'll keep this one brief. Sheena: Ugh, yes, I remember this so well, especially when they were like, You can bring your candy and get it X-rayed because we're talking about razor blades and candy. Sarah: No, right. Every parent has heard the warnings. Don't eat anything that isn't wrapped. Check the candy. Throw away anything that looks suspicious, anything that's open. Parents get worried about their children going out and accepting candy from strangers. Sheena: Yet it's very understandable fear, but yet you're sending your children out to get candy from strangers. Sarah: Exactly. You're you're taking them out to knock on doors and you know, but you know, there were a a couple of of incidents, you know, where things did appear in candy. but the question is, you know, what came first? Was it the urban legend or the actual events? Sheena: Well see, that's where it gets interesting. A sociologist named Joel Best, who spent years researching this, looked at reports going back decades. He found no confirmed case of a stranger killing a child with poisoned or tampered Halloween candy. Sarah: None. Sheena: What he found were mostly hoaxes, pranks, and rumors. Sometimes the kid would put a pin or a blade in their own candy for attention, and sometimes it was just a rumor that spread by word of mouth. Sarah: I mean the fear really took off in the sixties and seventies. The New York Times article in the nineteen in nineteen seventy warned parents about the possibility of dangerous treats. And the story spread from there. Sheena: And there was one real terrible case. In nineteen seventy four, in Houston, an eight year old boy named Timothy O'Brien died after eating a pixie stick filled with cyanide. Sarah: And it was horrifying, but it turned out that the poison came from his own father, Ronald O'Brien, who had put it in there to collect on a life insurance policy. He was later convicted and executed. Sheena: So he used the legend as a cover. He took advantage of a fear that was already out there. Sarah: So to answer the question, the legend came first. The rumors were already circulating, and there and then a real crime, which was not committed by a stranger at all, seemed to confirm everyone's worst fear. Sheena: Which is the perfect Halloween twist. The real monster wasn't a stranger at the door, it was somebody inside the house. Sarah: Which is a chilling thought. Absolutely chilling. And a good reason to still check your candy, not because strangers are out to get you, just because, you know, nobody wants to eat a melted titsy roll that's been in a pocket since two thousand nineteen. Yes. Sheena: there are a lot of regrets I have. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. so Sheena, we've been through a lot tonight. Sheena: Yeah, we started with a bonfire on a hillside two thousand years ago, and a thin veil between the living and the dead. Sarah: We watched the Romans and the church move in and rename everything, we followed the soul cakes, the witches, the masks, and a very stubborn man named Jack with a turnip. Sheena: We met the ghosts of the Civil War, the Irish bogey, and a bunch of teenagers who put a buggy on a haystack. Sarah: We watched a country panic over pranks and solve it with parades, party books, and candy. Sheena: And we ended up in a world where Michael Myers is wearing William Chapner's face and a grown woman named Sheena owns or will own a twelve foot skeleton. Sarah: When Gerald is thriving. Sheena: Gerald is thriving. But here's what I keep coming back to. Halloween is the oldest holiday we still celebrate. That's about facing the dark. Every version of it. The Celts, the medieval church, the Victorians, us. It's always about making the scary thing a little smaller. Sarah: You light a fire, you put on a mask, you carve a face, you eat the cake, and you get through the night. Sheena: It's honestly a very comforting idea. We've been scared of the dark for thousands of years, and every year we throw a party about it. Sarah: Yeah. So this October thirty-first, when the doorbell rings and there's a tiny witch, a tiny skeleton, and a banana on your porch. Remember that you're taking part in something very, very old. Sheena: And pay the toll, it's the law and cheaper. Sarah: well thank you very much. That's our episode for today. we appreciate you joining us. yeah. Sheena: Yeah, so definitely so ready for Halloween and Sarah: Do do you have candy? Like do you or do you you don't go out, right? With like friends or anything to like Sheena: No. Sarah: parties? Sheena: No, not really anymore. I mean, who wants to walk around in heals anymore? Sarah: Yeah. Well I I go out with the kids. I you know, that's they s they go out. So I I usually don't dress up but I am this year. But Sheena: See I I like doing the dress up part. It's just I have nowhere to go. So and yeah, I just I don't wanna be working Sarah: Now, do you Sheena: meals. Sarah: do you have candy though for the kids or do you just like keep your lights off and not even Sheena: depends on the year. I mean I don't have candy yet because it's just the el the eleventh of October, so Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, no, I I I get candy and I I put it out. We like we we just started decorating. We try to like to decorate like end of September 'cause, you know, if I could have a a fully decorated house all like three hundred and sixty five days a year I would. but we just started decorating 'cause we got a little off till a little bit of a late start. And yeah, so we just started doing that and I have to get the candy yet. but I usually put it like in a big cauldron on the porch and I put a sign out, you know, like, please help yourself and of course people have really taken it to heart and I come home with an empty Sheena: Okay. Sarah: cauldron. I mean, this cauldron is freaking huge and I fill it. And I come home and it's empty. And I'm like, Okay. Are you like just dumping it in your bag? What are you doing here? But, you know, and then of course we have our animatronics on the porch, you know, 'cause my daughter loves her animatronics and it's, you know, her thing, her baby. She was so excited, she's like out there decorating it like right now, you know, like earlier today she was like, you know, out on the porch and my gosh, it's crazy. But yeah, so you know, we we it's definitely a thing for us. So Sheena: Yep, it's I I as much as I I love Halloween for the spirit of it, I don't generally get to do anything on Halloween anymore. I've accepted Sarah: Yeah. Well Sheena: I'm just an old lady now, so Yep. Sarah: Cat lady. well I wanted to thank I wanna thank everyone who joined us today for the history of Halloween. I wanna remind everyone, you know, when you go out don't look behind you. you know. Sheena: don't look behind you. Sarah: Yeah. I'm I'm Sarah. Sheena: And I'm Sheena and Happy Halloween. Sarah: Happy Halloween. And remember, the veil is thin. Sheena: Rate and review us, you guys. Love you. Aye. Sarah: Thank you. Bye. Love you guys. Bye.