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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
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