Page 13 - EM 1 Oct Nov 2019_june_july_2009_Neat

Halloween Was Once So Dangerous ... 13

Halloween Was Once So

Dangerous That Some

Cities Considered Banning

It

Violence and vandalism were

once as traditional as candy and
costumes.

by Christopher Klein

As the Louisville Short Line chugged its way
through Newport, Kentucky, the passenger
train’s engineer peered out into the dark night of
October 31, 1879, and saw something truly
frightening—a body lying across the railroad
tracks. Pulling on the brake with all his might,
the engineer halted his iron horse in the nick of says. “But as metropolitan areas expanded, kids might give out costumes such as a white sheet to
time and jumped out of the locomotive. As he took the pranking into cities and it became more be ghosts, or soot to smudge on kids’ faces. The
rushed to the lifeless figure, the train operator destructive with setting fires, breaking glass, and next house might give out treats, the next might
quickly discovered why it wasn’t moving. It tripping pedestrians.” Boys ran through city have a basement set up as a tiny haunt. This
wasn’t a person at all, but a stuffed figure placed streets splattering people with bags of flour or starts to morph into kids getting dressed up and
there by 200 boys hiding along the tracks, who black stockings filled with ashes. One year, going house to house trick-or-treating.”
started to howl with laughter at their Halloween youths in Kansas City waxed streetcar tracks on In the midst of World War II, youngsters
trick. a steep hill causing a vehicle to slip and crash took pledges to support the soldiers and sailors
Although the juveniles had threatened into another streetcar, seriously injuring a abroad by not engaging in Halloween
his safety and that of his passengers, the conductor. vandalism. Children in Pittsfield,
engineer did not utter a single admonishment. After a spate of Halloween destruction in Massachusetts, vowed to “back our fighting men
After all, he engaged in similar antics when he 1902, the Cook County Herald expressed the by observing Halloween as they would want me
was a boy. Such things were to be expected on frustration felt by many residents of Arlington to. I will share in good, clean fun and merriment,
Halloween during the Gilded Age when the Heights, Illinois. “Most everybody enjoys a joke fight against waste and damage!”
ghoulish holiday was free of candy and full of or fun to a proper degree on suitable occasions; While Halloween itself grew tamer as
pranks, vandalism and even violence. but when property is damaged or destroyed it is trick-or-treating became part of the American
When immigrants from Scotland and time to call a halt,” the paper intoned. “We culture in the 1950s, the mischief didn’t
Ireland brought their Halloween traditions to the would advise the public to load their muskets or disappear completely. It just moved to the night
United States in the middle of the 1800s, they cannon with rock, salt or bird shot and when before Halloween. “Kids wanted both the trick-
celebrated as they did back in their homelands— trespassers invade your premises at unseemly or-treating and their pranking, so they moved it
not with costumed children going door-to-door hours upon mischief bent, pepper them good and to October 30, although it seemed to be a
for sweets but by pulling pranks. proper so they will be effectually cured and have Midwest and East Coast thing. It didn’t really
“In Ireland, boys would carve spooky no further taste for such tricks.” make it to the West Coast.”
faces in turnips to scare unwary travelers, and Some Americans did take up arms In parts of the Northeast, October 30
they would tie strings to cabbages and pull them against the Halloween tricksters—with fatal became known as Mischief Night. It was called
through fields to scare people,” says Lisa consequences. When pranksters in Tucson, Goosey Night in parts of New Jersey. Harkening
Morton, author of Trick or Treat: A History of Arizona, stretched a wire across a sidewalk to back to the old Scottish pranking tradition, it
Halloween. “The Scots had one really trip passers-by in 1907, one pedestrian thrown to was even known as Cabbage Night in some
obnoxious prank where they would pull up a the ground drew a revolver and shot dead one of locales. While the vandalism was usually along
cabbage stalk, get it smoking and shove it up to the jokesters. That same year, newspapers the lines of soaping windows, spraying shaving
a keyhole at someone’s door so that when that reported that a woman in Logansport, Indiana, cream, throwing eggs at houses or tossing toilet
person came home, they would find a house was literally scared to death when her heart paper over trees and bushes, it took a truly dark
filled with this noxious-smelling vapor.” stopped after her daughter answered a knock on turn in Detroit and other Michigan cities such as
Across the American countryside in the the door and screamed when a group of boys Saginaw and Flint, which were set ablaze in
latter 1800s, common Halloween tricks included “thrust a grinning pumpkin lantern” in her face. what became known as Devil’s Night.
placing farmers’ wagons and livestock on barn The malicious violence and looting During the 1970s and 1980s, arsonists
roofs, uprooting vegetables in backyard gardens connected with Halloween only grew worse turned the Detroit night sky a Halloween orange
and tipping over outhouses—be they occupied during the economic free fall of the Great by setting fire to trash cans, dumpsters and
or not. In some regions, so many gates were Depression. Morton says that by 1933, the abandoned buildings. The destruction peaked in
taken off their hinges or opened to allow holiday had become so destructive that cities 1984 when more than 800 fires were set across
livestock to escape that October 31 was known were considering banning it. “Many of the cities the city in a three-night arson spree. Detroit
as “Gate Night.” A teetotaling Protestant were smart enough, though, that they thought responded by instituting dawn-to-dusk curfews
minister in Steubenville, Ohio, awoke after one that while banning might not work, they might for unaccompanied youths under 18 and
Halloween to discover his front porch decorated be able to buy these kids off,” she says. mobilizing a city watch. With garden hoses at
with beer signs and towering pyramids of beer During the 1930s, civic and religious the ready and vigilant eyes, more than 30,000
kegs. The advent of the automobile delivered authorities, community organizations and volunteers participated in neighborhood patrols
further opportunities for mischief such as neighborhood families began to program parties, in 1990.
removing manhole covers from streets, deflating carnivals and costume parades on Halloween to Thanks to these continued efforts, the
tires and erecting fake detour signs to confuse keep kids out of trouble. “There’s not a lot of number of fires around Halloween in Detroit
motorists. money during the Great Depression so people have steadily decreased to near-normal levels on
“At first, the pranking was pretty pooled their resources and staged house-to- what city leaders now call Angels’ Night. []
innocent and limited to rural places,” Morton house parties.” Morton says. “The first house