I am a Halloween scholar with a PhD. in witchology, and I want to share my knowledge with you. These 12 Halloween facts and “didya knows?” cover everything you ever wanted to know about the holiday: pumpkins, black cats, and novelty music. Isn’t that what Halloween is all about?
We’re not entirely sure where Halloween traditions came from
It’s fitting that the origin of Halloween is somewhat mysterious. Many sources confidently state that the holiday originated with the Samhain celebrations of the Celts and Druids in Ireland, England, and Northern France around 2,000 years ago. Later, the Church christianized the feasts under the name “All Hallow’s Day” and “All Hallow’s Eve.” A nice story, but is it true?
Some modern historians maintain that ties between Celtic celebrations and early Christian practices are tenuous, and medieval Christian festivals provide the real blueprint for the holiday. It’s a mess. You can read more about it in my Real History of Halloween if you’d like.
Trick-or-treating was born in Canada
Canada, America’s hat, is the birthplace of trick-or-treating. Calling on your neighbors on holidays and demanding something has earlier roots in the European tradition of “wassailing,” but that was a Christmas thing. The first appearance of trick-or-treating in connection with Halloween in print comes from a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario in 1911. From there, it spread over the continent—slowly. The first mention of it in a national publication in the United States doesn’t happen until the late 1930s, and trick-or-treating didn’t really take off until the early ’50s, when it appeared in a Peanuts comic strip and a Disney cartoon.
Failed early attempts at Halloween greetings
Knocking on a door on Halloween and saying “trick or treat” is ubiquitous, but it wasn’t always so. In the early days of candy-begging in Canada, kids tried a variety of phrases to get candy. Here are some of the also-rans, ordered from worst to best:
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“Halloween apples!” Terrible. who wants an apple on Halloween?
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“Charity, please!” Better. I like the appeal to pathos.
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“Shell out!” Fantastic. Right to the point. Some kids added “Shell out, shell out, or we’ll break your windows out,” which is even better.
Elizabeth Krebs: The cranky grandmother of Halloween
Elizabeth Krebs, of Hiawatha, Kansas, is an unsung hero of Halloween, but she wasn’t fond of children. The founder of the Hiawatha Garden Club, Krebs loved her flowers most of all, but in Kansas in the early 1900s, the local youths celebrated “mischief night,” the night before Halloween, by running rampant through town, inevitably destroying Krebs’ carefully planted flower beds.
Embodying the can-do spirit of the American midwest, Krebs fought the vandals with love by organizing the first Halloween parade in U.S. history. The Hiawatha Halloween Frolic of 1914 featured a parade, a costume contest, treats, and music, all meant to distract the youth from wrecking Ms. Krebs’ precious posies. The event caught on, and Halloween parades and parties spread across the country, so you can thank Ms. Krebs for your local parade. Or thank the rebellious kids who stomped on her flowers, I guess.
Fears over weaponized Halloween candy are way overstated
I check my child’s candy for foreign substances every Halloween, even though I know I won’t find any; the idea of him biting into an apple with a hidden razor blade inside is so horrific, it overrides logic. But it’s not actually something worth worrying about. Despite warnings delivered from the federal government and countless anecdotal reports, there has never been a case of a drug dealer putting LSD, fentanyl, or any other illegal drug in children’s Halloween candy. (There was one case that was close: back in 1959, Dr. William Shyne, a Long Island dentist, gave out candy-covered laxatives to kiddies on Halloween, for reasons he never explained.) It’s the same with needles and razor blades. There was one case, in 2000, of a man who hid needles in Halloween candy, but trick or treating has been around for over 100 years, so it’s an extremely isolated occurrence.
Halloween: The movie
Released in 1978, John Carpenter’s Halloween inspired the “slasher” genre that took over horror films in the 1980s. It was produced for only $300,000 and grossed over $47 million (around $150 million in today-money), placing it among the most profitable independent films ever made. Halloween has spawned 12 other “official” Halloween movies (although some would argue that Halloween III doesn’t count; it’s set around Halloween, but has nothing to do with the other Halloween films) and thousands of imitators.
Christmas used to be the “ghost story” holiday
Ghost stories (and their modern equivalent, horror movies) are firmly enmeshed with Halloween culture, but Christmas was actually the ghost story holiday in Victorian England.
“Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories,” Jerome K. Jerome wrote in 1891. Despite the most famous Christmas story, “A Christmas Carol,” being a straight-up ghost story, the tradition has nearly entirely died out.
Do witches/satanists sacrifice black cats on Halloween?
Until recently, humane societies and animal shelters routinely restricted cat adoptions around Halloween, especially adoptions of black cats. This was partly based on the belief that pagans, satanists, druids, witches, and/or warlocks would adopt dark kitties in order to sacrifice them in unspeakable rites on Samhain.
As awesome as it would be to live in a world where this happens, in our boring reality, it doesn’t. Satanists don’t adopt or catnap black kitties at this time of year either. Satanists like cats, generally, and they’re also super boring, as anyone who’s ever been buttonholed by a satanist at a party can tell you. The belief probably stems from reports of witches with black cat familiars that date back to medieval times.
There is a non-folkloric reason pet adoption places sometimes give for limiting adoptions of black cats around Halloween, though: It is feared that some people adopt black cats as spooky decor for Halloween, only to abandon them on Nov. 1. I haven’t been able to find a documented case of this happening, though, so it’s probably hearsay, too.
They are lying to you about pumpkins
The pumpkin is not a vegetable. It is a fruit. Technically, the pumpkin is a berry.
Pumpkins are a product of the seed-bearing structure of a flowering plant, hence a fruit. Botanically, berries are defined as “simple, fleshy fruit that usually has many seeds.” Like a pumpkin.
Illinois: America’s pumpkin state
Halloween is in the middle of decorative gourd season, motherfuckers, and the majority of Halloween’s most beloved gourd—pumpkins—come from Illinois, our gourdiest state. It’s not a close contest, either: Illinois grows twice as many pumpkins, both the ornamental and the pie-filling kinds, as second-place California.
Some pumpkins weigh as much as a Toyota Corolla
I don’t want to kink shame or anything, but there are people out there who devote their lives to growing massive pumpkins. The largest ever weighed nearly one and a half tons. Grown by Italian gourd-fetishist Stefano Cutrupi, the prize winning berry tipped the scales at 2,702 pounds at the the Big Pumpkin Festival in Peccioli, Italy in 2021. (I attend this festival yearly.)
All about “The Monster Mash,” Halloween’s unofficial anthem
Explicitly Halloween-related songs never caught on like Christmas carols, so the closest thing we have is “The Monster Mash,” Halloween’s unofficial anthem. (Okay, maybe Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” comes close.) A product of the monster craze of the 1960s, “Monster Mash” was written and performed by Bobby “Boris” Pickett as a way to show off his monster-impersonation skills and spoof the “dance craze” songs that were popular at the time. “Monster Mash” hit number one on the billboard charts upon its release in 1962, and re-entered the charts in 1970 and 1973.
Pickett continued recording novelty records until the 2000s but never recaptured the original magic. Among Pickett’s follow-up recordings from the 1960s:
Later Pickett recordings include 1985’s “Monster Rap,” “It’s Alive” from 1993, and 2005’s “Monster Slash.”
Halloween’s hottest trend: Costumes for pets
I have looked toward the future of Halloween, and all I can see is a pug in a dandelion outfit. These days, everyone is putting costumes on their pets. In 2020, 18% of Americans said they planned to put an outfit on their animal, up from “only” 12% in 2012. Spending on costuming for pets is approaching a half-billion dollars per year, according to the National Retail Federation.
Dogs and cats in costumes are delightful to almost everyone, but some veterinarians warn agains the practice. A spokesperson for the British Vet Association said, “Dressing up animals or otherwise unnaturally changing their appearance is not only unnecessary and potentially harmful, but in some cases can also prevent pets from expressing their natural behaviors and from using their body language to communicate.”
On the other hand, it’s adorable and your cat loves wearing a funny hat, I promise.
