HALLOWEEN: 2,000 Years of Heinous History

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What you're about to hear is the syndicated radio version
that played over the weekend on several stations across the US.
It's a truncated version of the original podcast episode, which
you can find by searching for Halloween's Heinous History at
Weird Darkness dot com. It's Halloween, and millions of children

(00:24):
will dress in costumes and walk door to door demanding
candy from strangers. Parents will supervise this ritual without questioning
why they're teaching their kids to threaten tricks for treats,
or why they're carving faces into vegetables and lighting them
with fire. The whole thing sounds insane when you really
think about it, and that's because Halloween's actual origins are

(00:46):
far stranger and more disturbing than most people realize. Two
thousand years ago, in ancient Ireland, Celtic peoples marked October
thirty first as Salin, the night they believed the boundary
between the living and the dead completely dissolved. This wasn't metaphorical.
They genuinely believed ghosts walked among them on this specific night.

(01:09):
Archaeological evidence backs up just how seriously they took this belief.
Scientists have found multiple bog bodies from this era, including
lindau Man, whose stomach still contained his last meal of
partially scorched grain cake, possibly ritual, definitely final. He died
in a very specific way, strangled with a cord struck

(01:31):
hard enough to fracture his skull, then had his throat
cut in quick succession. This pattern, known as the threefold death,
appears in multiple bog bodies across Europe. The Celts were
making human sacrifices to protect themselves from spirits they believed
would drag the living into the other world. The journey

(01:51):
from those blood soaked Celtic rituals to today's candy filled
celebrations spans conquests, religious transformations, and corporate takeovers. Medieval Christians
tried to sanitize the pagan holiday by creating All Saints Day,
but people kept their ghost costumes and death rituals anyway.

(02:11):
Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine brought their turnip lanterns
to America, discovered pumpkins were easier to carve, and accidentally
created the jack o lantern industry. The nineteen seventies poison
candy panic, based entirely on myth and one father who
murdered his own son for insurance money transformed Halloween from

(02:32):
a homemade holiday into a three billion dollar corporate candy
delivery system. Every seemingly innocent tradition, from costumes to trigger
treating to those glowing pumpkins on porches, carry's traces of
genuine terror, human sacrifice, and humanity's oldest fears about death

(02:54):
and darkness. I'm Darren Marler, and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, weirdos.
This is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore,

(03:18):
the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and
unexplained coming up in this episode, The night is coming.
Porch lights and decorations won't change what moves through the
darkness on October thirty First, every plastic skeleton dangling from

(03:40):
a suburban tree, every polyester witch costume hanging in a
store window, every carved pumpkin glowing on a doorstep, they
are echoes of something that began long before any of
us were born, something older and more terrifying than most
people realize. Now, Bulg your doors, lock your windows, turn

(04:03):
off your lights, and come with me into the weird
darkness Ireland two thousand years ago, not the green rolling

(04:25):
hills from postcards, but a darker place where winter meant
death for the unprepared. The Celtic peoples living there, along
with their kin in Britain and northern France, understood something
about October thirty first that we've forgotten. They called this
night Sowen, and the name reveals everything. It translates from

(04:48):
Old Irish as summer's end, and those two words carried
genuine terror. Summer was over, the darkness was coming, and
with it came something else. The Celts didn't see time
as a straight line marching forward, but then the year
was a wheel that turned eternally, divided into two halves,

(05:10):
light and dark. Sowen marked the moment that wheel groaned
and shifted into darkness, bringing the most terrifying holiday of
the Celtic year. This wasn't an abstract calendar date. These
pastoral people survived by reading the seasons correctly. Sowen meant
bringing cattle down from high summer pastures and deciding which

(05:32):
animals would live through winter and which would have their
throats cut for meat. The harvest was complete, stored in
places they preyed would last until spring. Life itself was
being locked down, battened against the long darkness ahead. The
Celts believed that on Sowen, the boundary between the worlds

(05:54):
of the living and dead dissolved. On October thirty first,
ghosts of the dead returned to Earth. The barriers between
the physical world and the spiritual world broke down, allowing
interaction between humans and denizens of the other world. During
this time of year, hearth fires in family homes, the
source of warmth and life, were deliberately left to burn

(06:17):
out while the harvest was gathered. Once the work was complete,
the entire community would gather with their druid priests, who
would light a new communal fire using a wooden wheel
that would cause friction and spark flames. The wheel represented
the sun that dying light they desperately needed to survive.
Cattle were sacrificed, their throats opened to spill blood on

(06:40):
the ground, and participants took flames from the communal bonfire
back to their cold, dark homes to re light their hearths.
The timing wasn't arbitrary. Some Neolithic passage tombs in Great
Britain and Ireland structures built thousands of years before the
Celts are aligned with the sunrise at the time of Swen.

(07:01):
Stone circles and dolmens, including the massive ring at Avebury,
exhibit a west southwest alignment matching the setting sun on
October thirty first. Whatever the Celts were responding to on
this night, humans have been marking and fearing it longer
than recorded history. The earliest Irish literature, dating to the

(07:22):
ninth century, describes Swen in detail that would disturb modern readers.
The ancient burial mounds scattered across Ireland weren't just graves,
they were open portals to the other world on this night.
The literature doesn't speak metaphorically. It states this as fact,
the way we might note that banks are closed on Sundays.

(07:44):
These texts associate Salwen with bonfires and sacrifices, and sacrifices
meant exactly what you think. According to the leborgabala Iran,
one of Ireland's oldest texts, each Swen, the people of
Nemed had to get of two thirds of their children,
their corn, and their milk to beings called the Fomorians.

(08:06):
Scholars described the Femorians as representing the harmful powers of
nature chaos, darkness, death, blight, and drought personified. Parents in
ancient Ireland heard this story by firelight, knowing that the
tribute paid to Nemed's people represented actual sacrifice offered at
Winter's beginning when dark powers held sway. Later, texts written

(08:31):
by Christian monks who had no reason to exaggerate pagan
brutality became more specific. The Insentius and the Annals of
the Four Masters state that Swen in ancient Ireland was
associated with a god or idol called Chromekruk. The legendary
kings Diremate Max Surbaio and Murcotok Macachray supposedly each died
a threefold death on Salen, wounding, burning, and drowning simultaneously.

(08:57):
The stories say they were forewarned of these deaths, as
if the date itself carried an inescapable curse. Archaeologists thought
these were just stories until they started finding bodies. Yep,
bodies and the condition of those bodies and where they

(09:21):
were found and what they looked like definitely fits our
Halloween themed episode up next. October is birthday month for

(09:45):
Weird Darkness. This year makes ten years of doing the show,
but while it's our birthday, we want the gifts to
go to those who help people who suffer from depression, anxiety,
or thoughts of suicide or self harm. That's what our
annual Overcoming the Darkness campaign is all about. It's the
only fundraiser I have all year long. You can bring
hope to those who are lost in the darkness of depression.

(10:06):
You can make a donation right now at weird Darkness
dot com slash hope. I'll close out the fundraiser at
the end of October and announce how much we raised.
The more we raise, the more people we can help
to donate. Get more information about the fundraiser and the
organizations we're supporting, or find hope for yourself or someone
you know who are fighting depression. Visit Weirddarkness dot com

(10:27):
slash hope. Please donate now while you're thinking about it
Weird Darkness dot com slash hope. Welcome back to Weird Darkness.
I'm Darren Marler. You're listening to our Halloween episode, and

(10:50):
if you've missed the first section, or if you need
to step away and they're going to miss any part
of it, you can go to Weird darkness dot com
and do a quick search for Halloween's zenus history and
you'll be able to hear everything I'm talking about. We
were talking about Christian monks who in their texts were
describing some pagan brutality wounding, burning and drowning simultaneously. These

(11:14):
were thought to be just stories, but archaeologists started finding
the evidence with real bodies. Lindau Man, discovered in a
bog from the first or second century AD, was so
perfectly preserved by acidic pete that scientists analyzed his stomach

(11:36):
contents his last meal, a partially scorched grain cake, possibly ritual,
certainly final. Lindau Man died in a specific way. He
was strangled with a cord struck on the head hard
enough to fracture his skull, then had his throat cut
in quick succession. His body was then surrendered to the bog,

(11:57):
where it waited two thousand years to tell its story.
This pattern, the threefold death from Irish tales, appears repeatedly.
The talland Man in Denmark displays similar injuries. Bog bodies
throughout Europe tell the same story. A late Iron Age
shaft discovered at Hulshausen Bavaria contained a post at the bottom,

(12:20):
presumably for impaling victims. Scientists analyzing the wood found traces
of human flesh and blood, still clinging after two millennia.
At Garden Slack in East Yorkshire, archaeologists uncovered something still
more disturbing. A man and woman about thirty years old
were found huddled together in a shaft, a wooden stake

(12:42):
driven between them, pinning their arms together. Beneath the woman's
pelvis lay a tiny skeleton she had been pregnant. The
positioning suggests they were killed together, possibly as punishment, possibly
as sacrifice. The stake between them ensured they could not
comfort each other as they died. Julius Caesar, writing about

(13:06):
his conquest of Gaul, provides an outsider's view of Celtic sacrifice. Yes,
Caesar had reasons to paint the Celts as barbarians to
justify his wars, but his account aligns with archaeological evidence.
He wrote the Celts believed their gods delighted in the
slaughter of prisoners and criminals, and when captives ran short,

(13:28):
they sacrificed the innocent. Strabo, another Roman writer, gave more
detail about Druidic methods They would strike a man who
had been consecrated for sacrifice in the back with a
sword and make prophecies based on his death spasms, the
way the victim fell, the pattern of blood on the ground,
the final words or sounds all were read for meaning.

(13:52):
Strabo's most infamous description involved wicker cages, massive effigies woven
from wood, filled with living people, then set a flame.
That people are deprived of life surrounded by flames. He
wrote with clinical detachment whether these specific wicker men existed
or were Roman propaganda. We know the Celts practiced human sacrifice,

(14:16):
and fire played a central role in their rituals. While
druids read the future in death spasms and burning flesh.
Ordinary people had their own ways of peering through the
veil on son night. Divination wasn't entertainment. It was serious
business for people whose lives depended on unpredictable harvests. Apples

(14:38):
associated with the other world and immortality in Celtic mythology
became tools of prophecy. A young woman would attempt to
peel an apple in one continuous strand, requiring steady hands
that would shake. If you believed your future hung in
the balance, success meant throwing the peel over your shoulder,
hoping to see a letter in the twisted skin that

(14:59):
would reveal your future husband's initial marriage might mean the
difference between survival and starvation. Couples placed two nuts near
the fire, naming one for each partner, then watched in silence.
Quiet roasting meant a peaceful union. Hissing, cracking, and jumping
apart meant the relationship was doomed. The crack of an

(15:23):
exploding nut sounded like fate pronouncing judgment. Young women ate
mixtures of walnuts, hazel nuts, and nutmeg before bed on Halloween,
believing it would bring dreams of future husbands. They'd go
to sleep with stomachs full of this rich mixture, probably
experiencing the unsettled dreams that come from indigestion, which they

(15:45):
would interpret as prophecy. They'd stand before mirrors in darkened rooms,
holding candles, looking over their shoulders for their future husband's face,
but risking seeing something else in that flickering light. Catchmaking
cook who buried a ring in mashed potatoes wasn't playing games.
She was trying to change destiny. The first guest to

(16:08):
find a burr on a chestnut hut, the first successful
apple bobber. These weren't random winners of meaningless contests. They
were people marked by fate for marriage. People dressed as ghosts, demons,
and other creatures for camouflage, not celebration. They wore costumes
and masks to disguise themselves as harmful spirits, reasoning that

(16:31):
the dead wouldn't attack their own kind. Walking through your
village on salven Knight meant being unable to distinguish between
neighbors in disguise and actual visitors from the other world.
Offerings of food and drink left on doorsteps and at
crossroads were protection payments, not gifts. The ghosts needed appeasement.

(16:53):
Providing offerings meant they might pass peacefully Withholding them brought
bad luck, and bad luck luck meant death, disease, and
crop failure. The pagan world of Salen might have continued indefinitely,
but Christianity was spreading across Europe. As it moved into
Celtic lands, church leaders faced a challenge. The Celts weren't

(17:17):
practicing casual folk religion that could be discarded. Their beliefs
were woven into survival itself, guided by druids, who were priests, poets, scientists,
and scholars simultaneously. These sophisticated leaders commanded enormous respect and
held real political power. Early missionaries learned that condemning these

(17:39):
practices would fail. The Celts have been marking Salen for
over a thousand years. The Church developed a different strategy,
brilliant in its simplicity. Pope Gregory I laid out the
strategy in a six to Zho one ad letter that
reads like a corporate takeover manual. He advised missionaries in
Britain not to destroy pagan tempt, but to purify them

(18:01):
with holy water and convert them into churches. His reasoning
was practical. People familiar with a sacred place would continue
worshiping there even if the object of worship changed. The
transformation began slowly. In six nine, Pope Boniface four took
the pantheon in Rome, once honoring all pagan gods, and

(18:23):
rededicated it to the Virgin Mary and all Christian martyrs.
He established May thirteenth as a feast day commemorating this victory.
But May was spring, a time of rebirth. It didn't
carry the darkness that made Swen powerful. Pope Gregory I
understood this. In the mid eighth century, he moved the

(18:44):
feast to November one, directly challenging Swen. By the ninth century,
as Christianity spread through Celtic lands, the Church wasn't competing
with Salen, it was absorbing it. The master stroke came
in one thousand eighty when the Church established November second
as All Souls Day, creating a three day window enveloping

(19:06):
the old pagan festival. All Saints Day on November first
honored perfected souls in heaven. All Souls Day on November
second was for ordinary dead who weren't saints but weren't damned.
The Church had taken the Celtic obsession with the dead
and given it Christian theology. All Souls Day was celebrated

(19:27):
with bonfires like Sowen, people dressed in costumes, now saints,
angels and devils instead of spirits and demons. All Saints
Day was called All Hallows or All Hallowmas, and the
night before it, the traditional night of Swen, became All
Hallows Eve. Say it fast, slur it naturally, and you

(19:48):
get Halloween. During the Middle Ages, a tradition emerged that
would echo through centuries, poor citizens went door to door
on All Souls Day begging for food. Wealthy families gave
them pastries called soul cakes in return for promises to
pray for the famili's dead relatives. The Church encouraged this,

(20:08):
replacing the ancient tradition of leaving food for roaming spirits.
Instead of appeasing ghosts with offerings, Christians were performing charity
and earning prayers for souls in purgatory. The practice going
as souling was eventually taken up by children who visited
houses for ale, food and money. The structure of trick

(20:29):
or treating was taking shape. Those centuries would pass before
reaching modern form. Coming up, what really happened in nineteen

(20:53):
sixty four when a New York woman handed out packages
containing dog biscuits, steel wool, and ant poison to trigger treats.
The incident that started America's Halloween panic reveals something more
disturbing than poisoned candy, a transformation that would generate three
billion dollars in annual sales. As Christianity tightened its grip

(21:45):
on Europe, new fears replaced old soun terrors. The sixteenth
century brought witch hunts that persecuted were almost always women,
often healers who new folk remedies passed through generations. Their
knowledge of herbs and healing, once respected, became evidence of
satanic congress. Their everyday tools transformed once suspicion fell. The broom,

(22:08):
needed for basic cleanliness, became an evil flying machine, carrying
witches to unholy sabbaths. The cauldron, a basic cooking pot
in every kitchen, became a vessel for brewing poisons and
casting spells. The pointed hat, a variation on medieval country
women's every day where, became Witchcraft's iconic symbol. The association

(22:32):
with cats was particularly tragic. Women living alone naturally kept
cats for companionship and mouse control. Medieval Christianity decided whiches
transformed themselves into black cats to avoid detection. Cats are
naturally enigmatic, You never know their thoughts. They lingered near
hearts where brooms were kept, moved silently through the night,

(22:56):
their eyes reflecting light. Unnaturally normal feline behavior became evidence
of supernatural evil. Real women died because of these associations.
They were tortured into confessing impossible crimes, then burned or
hanged while crowds watched. Because This happened as Halloween was

(23:16):
solidifying into modern form, which is became permanently linked to
October thirty first the point at hat, broomstick, black cat
symbols born from genuine historical terror, People developed elaborate protections
they took seriously. They avoided walking under ladders, not for safety,

(23:37):
but because triangles were sacred to ancient Egyptians, and breaking
that triangle might invite evil. Mirrors became objects of fear.
Breaking one meant seven years of bad luck, but on Halloween,
looking into one might show more than your reflection. Spelling
salt required immediate action, throwing a pinch over your left

(23:59):
shoulder to blind the devil who was waiting there. Halloween
might have remained purely European, but history intervened. The holiday's
journey to America began with scattered settlements and conflicting beliefs.
In rigid Protestant New England, Halloween was dangerous, papist nonsense

(24:20):
at best, devil worship at worst. The Puritan's worldview came
from the Bible, where they found God, the devil, demons,
and angels, an entire hierarchy of supernatural beings. These weren't metaphors,
but real entities engaged in cosmic war for human souls.
The Puritans saw Halloween's playful treatment of death and evil

(24:43):
as genuinely dangerous. Dressing as demons, even in jest, invited
actual demons into your community. Children were taught the supernatural
was a dark force to be feared and devoided, never
celebrated or mocked. America was vast, and not everyone shared
Puritan sensibilities. In Catholic Maryland and southern colonies, Halloween found

(25:08):
fertile ground. As European ethnic groups and Native American beliefs merged,
a distinctly American Halloween emerged. The first American celebrations were
play parties, public harvest celebrations, where neighbors shared stories of
the dead, told fortunes, danced, and sang. Colonial Halloween festivities

(25:29):
preserved essential elements ghost stories and mischief making with American flavor.
By the mid nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common
in many regions, though Halloween wasn't celebrated everywhere. Then came catastrophe.
The Irish potato famine of the eighteen forties sent a

(25:50):
human tidal wave across the Atlantic. These weren't adventurous colonists
seeking opportunities. They were desperate refugees fleeing starvation. Over a
million Irish immigrants arrived in America, landing in Boston, New York,
and Philadelphia, facing poverty and vicious prejudice. No Irish need

(26:11):
apply signs were common. They were seen as dirty, drunken,
and dangerously Catholic. They brought something that would outlast all prejudice,
a complete, fully formed Halloween, not fragments or half remembered customs,
but the whole tradition preserved any desperate grip of people

(26:31):
who had lost everything else. These immigrants carried Halloween like
displaced persons carry photographs, as a connection to a world
that no longer existed. The Irish brought many traditions, but
none would undergo such dramatic transformation as the Jack O'Lantern.
The story of Stingy Jack was told in every Irish household.

(26:54):
Jack was a miserable drunk, a blacksmith known for cruelty
and cheapness. When the devil came to claim his soul,
Jack had other plans. One last drink, Jack begged. The devil,
perhaps amused, agreed. Jack had no money. He never did so,
he convinced the devil to become a silver coin to

(27:15):
pay the bartender. The moment the devil transformed, Jack snatched
him up and dropped him into his pocket next to
a silver cross. The holy symbol trapped the devil in
coin form. Jack refused release until the devil promised to
leave him alone for ten years. A decade later, the
devil returned. Jack seemed resigned, but asked for one final request,

(27:39):
an apple from a nearby tree. While the devil climbed
to fetch it, Jack carved crosses into the bark, trapping
him again. This time, Jack extracted an eternal promise the
devil would never claim his soul. When Jack died, bloated
with drink and alone, he presented himself at Heaven's gates.

(28:00):
God took one look and turned him away. Jack shuffled
to Hell, expecting welcome, but the devil, still bound by
promise and enjoying the irony, refused entry. Where am I
supposed to go? Jack wind The devil tossed him a
burning ember from Hell's fires mockery and told him to
find his own way. Jack hollowed out a turnip, his

(28:23):
favorite food, and placed the ember inside. From then on
he wandered Earth with his makeshift lantern, Jack of the Lantern,
Jack o Lantern, a soul so wretched even Hell rejected him.
In Ireland and Scotland, people carved their own versions of turnips, potatoes,
or beats. They'd placed grotesque faces in windows to frighten

(28:46):
away Jack's spirit and other evil. But turnips are small, hard,
difficult to carve. A single lantern might take hours with
tools that could slip and cut fingers. When Irish immigrants
discovered pumpkins, it transformed everything. These native gourds were massive
compared to turnips, with flesh soft enough for children to

(29:10):
carve a design. Taking an hour in a turnip took
minutes in a pumpkin. The bright orange seemed to glow
before adding candles. The transformation was instant. Within a generation,
turnips were forgotten and pumpkins became synonymous with Halloween. As
Halloween settled into America, something unexpected happened. The holiday about

(29:33):
supernatural fear transformed into a celebration of real human chaos.
By the late eighteen hundreds, Halloween became a night when
social rules were suspended. Normal order deliberately overturned. Pranks started innocently,
According to perpetrators, Farmers woke November first to find wagons

(29:55):
on barn roofs. Alboys managed to disassemble, haul and reas
ssemble them. Remains mysterious gates were removed and left in
roads or swapped with gates miles away. Livestock wandered main
street because someone opened every fence. The night became gate
night in many communities. In eighteen seventy nine, the pranks

(30:18):
took new edges. About two hundred Kentucky boys laid a
dummy across railroad tracks and hid The Louisville short line
engineer saw what looked like a body, pulled the brake
and jumped to help. Discovering stuffed clothes, The boys erupted
from hiding spots, laughing. The engineer didn't report them. He'd

(30:39):
done similar things in youth. But trains aren't wagons, and
a precedent was set for increasingly dangerous pranks. Urban areas
saw their own mayhem. Boys soaked windows so thoroughly stores
couldn't open until cleaned. They stretched ropes across sidewalks to
trip pedestrians. In Steubenville, Ohio, a teetotaling Protestant minister who

(31:02):
preached against alcohol woke to find his porch transformed into
a monument to beer, brewery signs and pyramids of empty kegs.
Automobiles brought new mischief opportunities. Prankster's removed manhole covers, leaving
holes in dark streets. They deflated tires or switched them
between cars. Fake detour signs sent motorists miles off course.

(31:26):
Boys ran through streets with flower bags or ash filled stockings,
covering pedestrians in powder or soot. Kansas City youths discovered
they could purlyze the trolley system by waxing tracks on
steep hills. Cars lost traction and slid backward into vehicles behind.
When a conductor was seriously injured in the resulting crash,

(31:48):
even pranksters realized they'd gone too far. Four that year,
newspapers tried shaming communities. The Cook County Herald wrote in
nineteen oh two, most everybody enjoys a joke or fun
to a proper degree on suitable occasions, but when property
is damaged or destroyed, it is time to call a halt.

(32:08):
The paper suggested violence we would advise the public to
load their muskets or cannon with rock, salt or bird shot.
And when trespassers invade your premises at unseemly hours, upon
mischief bent pepper them good and proper. Some took this literally.
In nineteen oh seven Tucson, when pranksters stretched wire across
the sidewalk and tripped to pedestrian, he pulled a revolver

(32:31):
and shot one boy dead. That year, in Logan's Port, Indiana,
a woman died of fright when boys thrust a glowing
jack O lantern at her daughter, answering the door. Her
heart stopped. The Great Depression transformed pranking from mischief into
genuine destruction. With millions unemployed and desperate, Halloween became an

(32:52):
outlet for rage. By nineteen thirty three, vandalism reached unprecedented levels.
Teenagers weren't just soaping windows, they were smashing them. They
weren't moving gates, they were burning them. Cars overturned telephone polls,
sawed down buildings, set a flame. That year became Black Halloween,

(33:14):
carrying disaster's weight like Black Tuesday four years earlier. Parents
were horrified, police overwhelmed, civic leaders seriously discussed banning Halloween,
something had to change. Communities across America embarked on coordinated domestication.
The solution was brilliant. Don't fight Halloween's energy, redirect it

(33:38):
give young people something transgressive and exciting, but safe and controlled.
So what was their brilliant idea to bring down the
violence and vandalism that youth perpetrated on Halloween. We'll find
out when Weird Darkness Radio comes back, And if you

(33:59):
miss any part of this special Halloween episode, you can
hear the whole thing through the podcast. Just do a
search for Halloween's heinous history at Weird Darkness dot com.

(34:23):
We all know someone who struggles with depression, whether we're
aware of it or not. It's something those who suffer
tend to deal with in silence, in the shadows. But
the organizations we are supporting with our annual Overcoming the
Darkness Fundraiser this month are working to make it easier
for those in the darkness to come into the light,
to find help, and to learn they're not alone, that
there are ways to overcome the darkness of depression and

(34:45):
live normal lives. I do this fundraiser only one month
out of the year, as October is the anniversary month
for Weird Darkness. We launched in October twenty fifteen. It's
National Depression Awareness Month and this month is spooky and dark,
kind of like depression. If you'd like to make a
donation or learn more about the fundraiser, or find hope
for yourself or someone you know who struggles with depression,

(35:07):
visit Weirddarkness dot com slash hope. The fundraiser ends Halloween
night at midnight. Please give what you can Weird Darkness
dot com slash hope. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm

(35:31):
Darren Marler. We were talking about Black Halloween, which contained
overturned cars, telephone polls, that the teenagers sawed down buildings,
set of flame. Obviously, you can't let that go, So
how do you handle the situation? Communities across America came
up with an idea that was kind of brilliant. You

(35:51):
don't fight Halloween's energy, you redirect it. So how exactly
did they go about doing that? Give young people something
transgressive and exciting but safe and controlled. During the nineteen thirties, schools, churches,
and civic organizations through massive Halloween parties. These weren't casual affairs.

(36:16):
But orchestrated events, keeping every potential vandal occupied all night.
Towns organized parades for costume display and prizes. Community centers
hosted apple bobbing, fortune telling, and haunted houses. The haunted
house deserves special attention, a perfect sublimation of Halloween's chaotic energy.

(36:37):
A nineteen thirty seven pamphlet provides disturbing instructions hanging old
fur strips of raw liver on walls where one feels
his way to dark steps. Weird moans and howls come
from dark corners, Damp sponges and hairnets hung from the
ceiling touches face doorways are blockaded, so guests must crawl
through a long, dark tunnel. Parents were instructed to traumatize

(37:02):
children in controlled environments rather than let them traumatize the community.
Raw liver on walls someone designed. Having children touch organ
meat in darkness was preferable to soaked windows. Anoka, Minnesota,
claims the first city wide Halloween celebration in nineteen twenty,
complete with parade, bonfire, and free treats, the key word free.

(37:27):
The city paid protection money to prevent vandalism. The model
spread nationwide. The real genius came with trick or treating
as we know it. Trick or treat appeared in print
in the late nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties. Social engineering,
at its finest, it took Halloween vandalism's implicit threat and

(37:48):
made it explicit but manageable. Children literally threatened tricks without treats,
but the threat was ritualized controlled the trick my bee
soap on windows, not your car on your roof. House
to house parties became elaborate. The first house provided costume materials,

(38:09):
sheets for ghosts, burnt cork for faces. The next offered food.
Another transformed their basement into a cave. Children processed through
neighborhoods in supervised groups. Chaotic energy channeled into approved activities.
World War II nearly destroyed this new Halloween. Sugar became

(38:30):
war's first home front casualty. One third of American sugar
came from Japanese occupied Philippines. Rationing began May fourth, nineteen
forty two. The sugar book became more important than money.
Each person got half a pound weekly, fifty percent less
than pre war. Halloween without candy was Christmas without presents.

(38:53):
Americans adapted, communities, organized conservation Halloween, where children collected scrap
metal and rubber instead of candy. Some neighborhoods gave war stamps.
Children pledged to support troops by avoiding vandalism. Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Groups vowed to back our fighting men by observing Halloween

(39:14):
as they would want me to. Sugar rationing ended June
nineteen forty seven. Like a dam bursting, candy companies have
been waiting. Curtis and Brock launched massive campaigns before sugar
returned to shelves. Children's magazines ran Halloween issues. Peanuts devoted
three comic strips to Halloween in nineteen fifty one. The

(39:36):
final push came from Disney in nineteen fifty two. The
short film Donald Duck Trick or Treat served as an
instruction manual. It showed Huey, Dewey, and Louis approaching Donald's
house costumed carrying bags, dealing with his tricks, which Hazel
helps them fill Donald's house with chaos until he surrenders candy.

(39:57):
The cartoon was propaganda that worked. It established rules. Children
wear costumes, carry bags, say trick or treat, adults give candy.
Refusers deserve consequences. Within years trick or treating spread to
every American suburb. The domesticated nineteen fifties Halloween seemed perfect, safe, controlled,

(40:21):
commercial children dressed as cowboys and princesses, collected candy from
neighbors and went home happy. The wilderness was tamed. Then
nineteen sixty four changed everything with one woman's terrible decision.
Helen File of Green Lawn, New York, was fed up
teenagers she considered too old came demanding candy. These weren't

(40:45):
cute eight year olds, but sixteen year olds with stubble
grabbing treats meant for children. File decided to teach them
a lesson. She prepared packages containing dog biscuits, steel wool,
and poisonous ant buttons them to older kids with smiles.
No one was hurt. The packages were obviously wrong. The

(41:07):
teenagers knew immediately. File admitted what she had done when confronted,
insisting it was a joke about age appropriate activities, but
she had crossed an uncrossable line. She'd weaponized Halloween candy.
The story exploded nationally. If one woman did this as
a joke, what might someone with evil intentions do? Newspapers

(41:31):
ran with it. The legend of poisoned Halloween candy was born.
Panic escalated. In nineteen sixty seven, The New York Times
reported thirteen cases of razor blades and apples across New Jersey,
with moore in Ottawa and Toronto. Public outrage was so
intense New Jersey passed a law before Halloween nineteen sixty

(41:51):
eight mandating prison terms for booby trapping apples. Thirteen more
razor blade apples were discovered that year in fire New
Jersey counties. Looking closely at these cases reveals patterns. One
boy claimed he bit an apple but stopped before hitting
the blade. Another found the blade while cutting out runt.

(42:14):
A third discovered it when giving the apple to his
father for appealing. In every case, the child was uninjured
and was the sole source of both apple and discovery.
Panic peaked October twenty eighth, nineteen seventy, when Times columnist
Judy Clemsroude published an editorial haunting parents for decades. She

(42:34):
wondered if that plump read apple from the kindly old
lady down the block might have a razor blade hidden inside.
Pure speculation phrased as questions, but readers took it as fact.
Two days later, five year old Kevin Tustin died in
Detroit after consuming heroin on Halloween. Reports claimed contaminated treats.

(42:59):
The truth emerged later Kevin found his uncle's stash accidentally.
The family claimed Halloween candy to protect the uncle. The
story truly embedding. The myth came from Houston. Nineteen seventy four.
Ronald Clark O'Brien took his children trick or treating on
a rainy Halloween. At one house. He lagged behind, then

(43:21):
emerged with five giant pixie sticks, distributing them to his
children and three others. Before bed. He encouraged eight year
old Timothy to eat the candy, helping open the stuck wrapper.
Timothy died within an hour. The pixie sticks contained enough
cyanide for three adults. O'Brien immediately blamed the neighborhood, claiming

(43:43):
stranger poisoning. Investigators noticed oddities. O'Brien couldn't identify which house
gave the pixie sticks. He recently had taken a large
life insurance policy on both children. He'd asked coworkers about
cyanide days before the truth was horrifying. O'Brien murdered his

(44:04):
son for insurance money. Using Halloween as cover. He was
convicted and executed in nineteen eighty four. Well, the damage
was done. If fathers could kill children with Halloween candy,

(44:25):
what might strangers do. The story doesn't end there. Our
Halloween candy panic covers the Taiwan al murders, a state
canceling trick or treat, entirely advice columnists perpetuating lies about
razor blades and poison, and a whole lot more. But
some people were really happy about all of this. You
can find out who by listening to the full story

(44:46):
at weird Darkness dot com by doing a quick search
for Halloween's heinous history. While there you can get the
print version of everything I'm talking about. Also in the website,
you can visit my dark News blog for stories that
never make it to the radio sh podcast. If you
like what you've heard tonight, please share this show with
somebody you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories,

(45:07):
true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do. All
stories used in Weird Darkness are purported to be true
unless stated otherwise. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark copyright
Weird Darkness and now that we're coming out of the dark.
I'll leave you with a little light Ephesians five, verse eleven.
Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness.

(45:31):
Instead expose them. And a final thought from even the
greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent HP Lovecraft. I'm
Darren Marler. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

(46:18):
Welcome Weirdos. This is Weird Darkness Radio. Here you'll find
stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre,
unsolved and unexplained. Coming up this hour, we're in the
Halloween spirit, starting with movie monsters. Film historians examining Hollywood's

(46:43):
monster movies from the nineteen thirties discovered that makeup artists
completely abandoned the source material when creating the creatures that
would define Halloween for generations. When researchers traced these visual
inventions through decades of costume evolution, they uncovered unexpected connections
between a two dollars rubber mask, a nineteen seventy four

(47:04):
Greenwich village puppet walk, and gatherings that now draw millions
into streets every October thirty First, what did John Carpenter
understand about suburban Halloween in nineteen seventy eight, the Universal
Pictures never grasped in their Gothic castles. He yets you
lies in a specific kind of terror that emerges when

(47:24):
familiar neighborhoods become hunting grounds, where anyone could be hiding
behind a blank white face. Bult your doors, lock your windows,
turn off your lights, and come with me into the
weird darkness. Wall candy companies conquered Halloween's economy, Hollywood puckered

(48:00):
its soul. The transformation began in the nineteen thirties when
Universal Pictures brought European Gothic literature to American streets. They
weren't just making movies. They were creating horror's definitive visual language.
Bram Stoker's novel describes Dracula various ways, sometimes old, sometimes young,

(48:21):
with a bushy mustache and hairy palms. When Bela Lagosi
took the role in nineteen thirty one, he created something new.
The slicked hair, penetrating stare formal tuxedo with high collared cape.
None from Stoker, Legosi and the studio invented the look
so iconic. Every vampire sense is measured against it. Frankenstein's

(48:46):
Monster underwent more dramatic transformation. Mary Shelley's novel describes the
creature with flowing black hair, yellowish translucent skin over an
enormous frame. He's articulate quotes Paradise lost. The novel's creature
is a tragic philosopher. Makeup artist Jack Pierce discarded everything.

(49:08):
He created the flat topped head, suggesting a skull sawd
for brain surgery, neck electrodes, conducting animating electricity, heavy boots,
and a hulking gait. Boris Karloff added nonverbal groans and
a stiff armed walk. This wasn't Shelley's creature, but something
new that obliterated the original. Universal built an entire pantheon.

(49:33):
They gave the Mummy its shuffling walk and trailing bandages.
They created the Wolfman while werewolf legends existed. Lawn Cheney
Junior's transformation, Full Moon Rules, silver bullets, the Cursed Man's
tragedy were Hollywood inventions. These were the first cinematic universe,
monsters crossing into each other's films. For decades, Universal Monsters

(49:57):
defined Halloween every the October children dressed as Dracula, Frankenstein,
the Mummy, the Wolfman. These costumes were safe, familiar, comforting.
The monsters were scary but distant, locked in black and
white films and European castles. In nineteen sixty eight, a
low budget Pennsylvania film changed everything. George A. Romero's Knight

(50:22):
of the Living Dead shocked American horror. Before this, zombies
were minor figures. The word comes from Haitian folklore corpses
reanimated by Bacoor's as slaves. Traditional zombie horror was loss
of will, not violence. They were pitiful, not terrifying. Romero
created something unprecedented. His creatures, never called zombies, were reanimated corpses,

(50:49):
driven by insatiable hunger for flesh. Slow but relentless, anyone
killed would rise to join them. Only brain destruction stopped them.
Revolutionary no explanation given. They simply existed and society collapsed.
The film's grainy documentary style felt real. Unlike universals Gothic films,

(51:12):
this wasn't happening in Carpathian castles, but Pennsylvania farmhouses that
could be anywhere. Zombies weren't aristocratic vampires or tragic werewolves.
They were neighbors, family, wearing burial clothes or death outfits.
The social commentary was unmistakable. Released in nineteen sixty eight
during Vietnam and civil unrest, the film showed American society

(51:35):
consuming itself. The government was useless, the media clueless, the
real danger from the living turning on each other. The
ending an African American hero shot by white vigilantes mistaking
him for a zombie that resonated with racial tensions. Romero
created a new monster and mythology. The zombie Apocalypse became

(52:00):
a modern American nightmare, our contribution to horror's pantheon, a
monster for the atomic age, spreading like radiation, turning connectivity
into liability. Ten years later, John Carpenter did something even
more audacious, making Halloween itself the monster. Carpenter's nineteen seventy

(52:22):
eight Halloween took the safely domesticated holiday and made it terrifying.
Opening with a six year old murdering his sister on Halloween.
Jumping fifteen years to his mental institution escape, Michael Myers
returns to Haddonfield, Illinois, stalking and killing teenagers on Halloween.
The genius was using Halloween's own iconography. Suburban safety became lies,

(52:47):
a trick of treater's innocence. Masked evil jack o' lanterns
meant to repel evil, grinned as evil passed. Carpenter turned
every symbol of Halloween's domesticated form into directd Michael Myers
was a new movie monster. Not supernatural, not explicitly, not deformed,

(53:08):
no sympathetic backstory. He was, as doctor Loomis says, purely evil.
His featureless white mask, a Captain Kirk mask painted white
with widened eye holes, was a blank slate or projected fears.
The mask represents a crucial evolution in Halloween imagery. Costing
a buck ninety eight from the costume shop, this rubber

(53:30):
became horror history's most recognizable image. Terror didn't require elaborate effects.
Sometimes the most frightening thing was the absence of expression,
the void where humanity belongs. Halloween earned forty seven million
dollars against a three hundred twenty five thousand dollars budget,
launching a franchise earning over five hundred million dollars. It

(53:54):
established the slasher template, dominating horror's next decade. Friday the
thirteen nightmare on Elm Street. Countless others followed Carpenter's formula,
masked killer, teenage victims, elaborate deaths. Carpenter's achievement was making
Halloween night frightening again. After nineteen seventy eight, parents looked

(54:16):
at trigger treaters differently. That masked child could be innocent
or something else. The holiday, tamed, commercialized, made safe, was
suddenly dangerous again, not from poisoned candy, but from evil
wearing any face, being anyone, striking anywhere. Coming up on

(54:38):
Weird Darkness, when nineteen seventies baby boomers decided to reclaim
Halloween from the sanitized children's holiday it had become. They
transformed Greenwich Village's streets into Everica's first massive adult Halloween parade,
creating a revolutionary night where normal social rules dissolved and
marginalized communities found freedom in costume forever, changing Halloween from

(55:02):
a kid's candy grab into an adult carnival of identity
and rebellion. Up next, Weird Darkness is celebrating our birthday

(55:23):
this month. We use this annual celebration to help those
who struggle with depression. Every October, we raise money for
organizations that help people overcome depression, anxiety, and thoughts of
suicide and self harm. It's called overcoming the darkness, and
you can make a donation right now at Weirddarkness dot
com slash hope. That's weird Darkness dot com slash hope.

(55:44):
A gift of any amount helps, with every dollar bringing
hope to someone affected my depression. To donate, to get
more information about overcoming the darkness, or to find hope
to battle back the darkness of depression in yourself or
someone you love, visit weird Darkness dot com slash hope.
The fundraiser ends on Halloween night at midnight, so please
give right now while you're thinking about it. That's Weird

(56:06):
Darkness dot com slash hope. Welcome back to Weird Darkness.
I'm Darren Marler. I'm sharing stories from a special Halloween

(56:27):
episode that I created for the podcast, and I won't
have time to get to the entire thing, but you
can't hear it all if you go to Weirddarkness dot
com and do a quick search for Halloween's heinous history.
While we've been talking about how the kids get their Halloween,
and then there's the monster movies that made Halloween scary again.
But there are some baby boom or adults that aren't

(56:50):
real happy with the fact that they had to grow
up and have to give up Halloween, so they decided
to change that. In the nineteen seventies, baby boomers who
grew up with sanitized trick or treating, protected from razors
and poison, watched Halloween transform from a dangerous holiday to

(57:10):
a candy delivery system, and they decided that they wanted
it back. These suburban children, raised on television and prosperity,
came of age during the nineteen sixties upheavals. They remembered
Halloween when normal rules didn't apply, when you became someone else.
When worlds inverted. As adults in the liberated nineteen seventies,

(57:31):
they weren't ready to surrender that Adult Halloween parties became
new rituals. These weren't supervised church socials or community gatherings.
These were boundary pushing events where costumes became statements. Treats
were alcoholic tricks unsuitable for children. Costumes told the story

(57:52):
instead of ghosts and witches. Adults dressed as political figures, celebrities,
cultural references, Nixon masks flew off shelves post Watergate, the
first president mass produced as a Halloween mask. Couples created
elaborate visual puns. Groups coordinated themes requiring explanation, turning parties

(58:12):
into performance art. The revolution came when parties moved from
homes to public spaces. New York's Greenwich Village nineteen seventy four,
Ralph Lee, a puppeteer and mask maker, walked his neighborhood
with his friends, showing handmade creations. A small procession, maybe dozens,
walking house to house, like trick or treaters, but crucially different.

(58:36):
They weren't asking for anything. They were displaying, performing, being seen.
The next year, more joined words spread through artistic communities
about something special happening Halloween in the village. By year three,
it wasn't a walk, but a parade. By year five,
an institution. What started as friends showing masks evolved into

(58:59):
him massive spectacle, drawing two million spectators sixty thousand participants.
The Village of Halloween Parade was unprecedented in America. Giant puppets,
stories tall, wove through streets. Elaborate floats carried theatrical performances.
City blocks became outdoor stages. This wasn't children asking for candy,

(59:21):
adults claiming the night, turning Manhattan into a temporary autonomous
zone where normalcy was suspended. Other cities noticed. West Hollywood
started its Halloween Carnival in nineteen eighty seven, growing into
the world's largest Halloween street party. Santa Monica Boulevard closed
for a mile. Hundreds of thousands packed streets and costumes

(59:43):
from clever to outrageous to barely there. San Francisco's Castro
developed massive parties. New Orleans created the Crew of Boos Parade.
Salem expanded Halloween into a month long festival. These weren't
just parties, carnivalesquin versions where society's rules dissolved. Secretaries became dominatrixes, businessmen,

(01:00:06):
drag queens, housewives, horror villains. For one night, identity fluidified,
hierarchy dissolved, the streets belonged to whoever had the best
costume or the loudest voice. The parades served another function
for marginalized communities. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, when
being openly gay could cost employment, Halloween became sanctioned gender

(01:00:29):
play at expression, costume, anonymity, and crowd chaos provided cover
what might mean arrest on other nights was celebrated on Halloween.
The holiday became a pressure valve, a freedom moment in
restrictive society. While Americans reclaimed adult Halloween, the holiday prepared
for another journey, carried not by immigrants but electrons. American

(01:00:53):
movies and television spread globally, bringing fascinating Halloween images to
international audiencess like Spielberg's et presented Halloween as pure magic
to global audiences. The trick or treating sequence, with Elliott
taking a disguised et, showed the holidays charming, costumed children
walking safely through beautiful suburbs, neighbors smiling with candy. The

(01:01:16):
alien enchanted more effective than propaganda. Television reinforced messages. Every
sitcom had Halloween episodes. The Simpsons tree House of Horror
became a global phenomenon. Children and countries without Halloween tradition
saft favorite characters dress up and trick or treat they
wanted the same. Japan's adoption represents pure cultural borrowing based

(01:01:40):
on esthetics. Halloween has no Japanese historical roots, no ancestor
worship connection. Japan has elaborate traditions already no harvest timing.
Halloween arrived as pure image, divorced from context, embraced enthusiastically.
Tokyo Disneyland introduced Halloween in a late nineteen nineties presenting

(01:02:01):
a sanitized COWHII version. The real explosion came bottom up
from young adults seeing Halloween as a massive cosplay excuse.
Japan already had a robust costume culture through anime and
manga fandoms. Halloween provided publicly acceptable costume wearing outside conventions.
Shibuya District now hosts the world's largest Halloween gatherings. Hundreds

(01:02:25):
of thousands packed the streets not for parades, but to
see and be seeing costumed a massive spontaneous fashion show.
Salary men as anime characters, office ladies as game heroines,
no trick or treating, minimal decoration, only commercial Halloween products.
Japan took Halloween, stripped everything except the costumes, and created

(01:02:48):
something new. Mexico presents a different case. American Halloween encountered
Dia delos buertos, a tradition with deeper roots and richer meaning.
Dia delos buertos combine mis pre Columbian Aztec death beliefs
with Catholic All Soul's Day, creating a uniquely Mexican synthesis.
Families build elaborate afreendas decorated with marigolds, photos and favorite

(01:03:12):
foods of deceased relatives. They visit cemeteries, cleaning graves, spending
nights celebrating, not mourning the dead. The holidays couldn't differ
more spiritually. Halloween plays with death as frightening. Diadela mouertos
embraces death as life's cycle. Halloween fears ghosts, Diadela muertos

(01:03:34):
welcomes them. Halloween involves strangers in danger, Diadela muertos involves
family and continuity. Calendar proximity and American media created hybrids.
Mexican children trick or treat, calling it padeer calvarita or
asking for skulls. Stores sell plastic jack o lanterns and

(01:03:54):
sugar skulls. Families celebrate both seeing no contradiction and fearing
fiction monsters. October thirty first and welcoming deceased grandparents November one,
Halloween's return to Europe as an American export met the
most resistance older generations in France, Germany, Spain. They see
cultural imperialism, American commerce overwhelming local traditions. Younger Europeans raised

(01:04:20):
on American media embrace it enthusiastically, throwing parties resembling Los Angeles.
The United Kingdom and Ireland faced the strangest situation. They
watched their exported tradition return unrecognizable. The country inventing turnip
jack a lanterns imports plastic pumpkins from China. Children who

(01:04:40):
might have gone guysing demand trick or treat in television,
learned American accents. Old traditions persist alongside new bonfires burn
Halloween Knight. In Ireland, Scottish children perform for treats rather
than demanding. Ancient and modern exist uneasily parallel. Stand on

(01:05:01):
any suburban street Halloween night and witness something extraordinary. Those
children in store bought costumes carrying plastic Chinese made pumpkins,
asking for mass produced candy. They're participating in something pre
dating Christianity, written history, possibly civilization itself. Every porch jack

(01:05:21):
o lantern contains layers of meaning, like geological strata. The
cheerful face carved by suburban parents is American. The pumpkin
itself represents European tradition transformed by New World agriculture. Carving
faces to frightened evil comes from Ireland. The wandering soul
story emerged from medieval Christianity, explaining pagan practices. The light

(01:05:45):
inside flame or bulb connects directly to Swen's great bonfires
lit against winter darkness. Each Halloween element traveled through time,
transformed but persistent. Celtic warriors passed between protective bonfires evolved
into Medieval Christians carrying turnip lanterns, becoming Irish immigrants carving

(01:06:07):
pumpkins and tenements becoming suburbanites buying pre carved foam pumpkins
with led candles. Researchers tracking Americans' behavior during October twenty
twenty in the middle of the pandemic discovered something that
shouldn't have been possible, spending patterns that defied every prediction

(01:06:28):
about how people respond to crisis. When data analysts examined
millions of digital interactions from that same period, they found
evidence of a transformation occurring in real time, one that
previous generations had never experienced. When weird darkness returns, what
happens when an ancient ritual collides with modern surveillance technology.

(01:06:51):
The answer lies in what fifteen point eight million doorbell
cameras recorded on a single night, and why parents who
thought they were protected their children were actually placing them
in a whole new kind of danger. The Halloween of

(01:07:36):
twenty twenty was supposed to die thanks to COVID. Parents
across America looked at infection rates, watched the news, and
prepared to explain to their children why this year would
be different. The numbers told the story. Forty two percent
of American households planned to consume less candy that year,
and trick or treating was expected to drop by forty

(01:07:57):
one percent. Walking through neighborhoods that October felt like witnessing
Halloween's funeral. Only twenty six percent of survey respondents reported
they were likely to participate in any Halloween activities in
twenty twenty, a drop from nearly half of households forty
nine percent who had handed out candy just the year before.
But Halloween refused to stay buried. Instead, it underwent a

(01:08:22):
transformation that would have been unimaginable even five years earlier.
In living rooms across America, parents who had never heard
of zoom backgrounds were learning to transform their home offices
into haunted mansions. Companies and families turned to video conferencing
for virtual costume contests and pumpkin carving events. Children paraded

(01:08:45):
their costumes not down sidewalks, but across laptop screens. Microsoft
teams meetings, usually reserved for quarterly reports and budget discussions,
became Halloween parties. Seventeen percent of celebrants planned to celebrate
virtually in twenty twenty, creating a category of Halloween celebration
that had never existed in the holiday's two thousand year history.

(01:09:09):
The financial data revealed something unexpected. Those who celebrated in
twenty twenty actually spent more, on average, ninety two dollars
twelve cents compared to eighty six dollars twenty seven cents
in twenty nineteen. Trapped in their homes, Americans poured money
into decorations that would be seen primarily through windows and

(01:09:30):
ring doorbell cameras. Front yards became theatrical stages for an
audience that might never come. The holiday wasn't just surviving,
it was mutating a performance without a live audience, a
celebration witnessed primarily through screens. Long before the pandemic forced
Halloween online. Social media had been reshaping the holiday. The

(01:09:52):
transformation started with photos of jack o lanterns on Facebook,
costume ideas shared on Pinterest. By the lead t twenty tens,
the fundamental nature of October thirty first had shifted. Nearly
half forty eight percent of millennials admitted making Halloween purchases
strictly for social media posts, not for their children, not

(01:10:13):
for community celebration, not even for themselves, but specifically to
create content for Instagram and TikTok. Matt Schul's chief industry
analysts that compare cards, observed, it's not even necessarily about
having a great time. It's about looking like you're having
a great time. The performance had replaced the experience. Young

(01:10:34):
adults spent hours crafting costumes worn for minutes, just long
enough to capture the perfect photo. Parents invested in professional
grade decorations not to frighten tricker treaters, but to create
backdrops for family photos. About four to ten millennials said
they felt a lot of pressure to spend on Halloween,
and nearly one third admitted to spending more on Halloween

(01:10:57):
than any other holiday. This pressure wasn't coming from children
or traditions. It was coming from the invisible audience of
social media, the imagined judgment of followers who might scroll
past without double tapping. The platforms themselves became Halloween's architects.
Pinterest was cited by eighteen percent of consumers for Halloween inspiration,

(01:11:19):
up from thirteen percent in twenty fifteen, while fourteen percent
cited both YouTube and Instagram, up from eight to seven percent, respectively.
Every year, the bar Rose simple costumes became cosplays, carved
pumpkins evolved into professional sculptures, front yards transformed into theatrical productions.

(01:11:41):
The gender dynamics revealed deeper patterns. Men were far more
likely than women to admit their Halloween spending was driven
by social media thirty seven percent compared to just twenty
one percent. Nearly half of dad's forty six percent said
their kids guilted them into spending on Halloween, more than
doubled a percentage of moms who said the same twenty

(01:12:02):
one percent. Fathers performed for audiences they would never meet,
while mothers focused on immediate family and community. By the
time TikTok emerged, Halloween had been colonized by social media.
The hashtag Halloween costume alone had accumulated over three billion views,
each view representing someone either performing or consuming Halloween as

(01:12:25):
content rather than lived experience. While parents worried about candy
safety and supervised trunk or treats, a different monitoring system
was spreading across American neighborhoods. Ring doorbells, marketed as security devices,
were transforming Halloween into a massive, coordinated surveillance event. Ring

(01:12:46):
announced its doorbell cameras were activated fifteen point eight million
times on Halloween, with the company collecting, storing, and analyzing
detailed data about how, when, and where people used its cameras.
Every costumed child became a data point, Every parent was logged,
every trick or treat was recorded, timestamped, and fed into algorithms.

(01:13:12):
Ring analyzed this data with precision. The company tracked the
exact busiest trick or treating times six twenty nine pm
on the East Coast and six fifty one pm on
the West coast, and identified the busiest cities for doorbell activity,
including Houston, Miami, and San Antonio. Amazon possessed more detailed

(01:13:32):
information about American Halloween patterns than any anthropologist or historian
had ever compiled. Ring turned this surveillance into marketing opportunities,
circulating videos of children on Halloween on Twitter and posting
footage of trick or treaters on its blog, including one
showing a father telling his children to follow the honor
system with a candy bowl and another showing children getting

(01:13:55):
scared by a giant spider decoration. Children who thought they
were or tree reading had become actors in corporate advertising campaigns.
Only thirteen percent of Americans actually knew how smart doorbell
companies used the personal data they collected, while eighty seven
percent either didn't know or were unsure. Parents installing these

(01:14:17):
devices believed they were protecting their children. Instead, they were
creating a comprehensive surveillance network. In July twenty twenty two,
Amazon revealed it provided Ring video doorbell camera recordings to
police departments at least eleven times that year without the
owner's consent. The cameras families installed to watch for trick

(01:14:38):
or treats were building a surveillance infrastructure that law enforcement
could access without warrants. Max Isaac's senior staff attorney for
NYU School of Laws Policing Project, laid out the implications
Ring operated as a privately owned surveillance network where police
can dramatically expand their surveillance capabilities without any meaningful overs site.

(01:15:01):
Halloween had become the gateway for normalized surveillance. If people
accepted being filmed while trick or treating, they'd accept being
filmed anywhere. The transformation COVID accelerated could never be reversed.
The digital Halloween that emerged from the pandemic didn't replace
the physical holiday. It created a parallel dimension, existing year

(01:15:24):
round in servers and social feeds. By twenty twenty four,
Halloween spending had reached eleven point six billion dollars, with
much of that growth driven by digital engagement. Instagram and
Facebook reported seeing a thirty percent increase in engagement during Halloween.
Modern Halloween existed in multiple realities. There was the physical

(01:15:45):
Halloween on doorsteps and sidewalks. Layered on top was the
social media Halloween of staged photos and viral TikTok dances.
Beneath both lurked the surveillance Halloween of doorbell cameras and
neighborhood watch apps, awarding everything, analyzing patterns, building profiles. Each
dimension fed the others. Parents checked Instagram for costume inspiration,

(01:16:10):
bought supplies on Amazon based on algorithmic recommendations, posted photos
that would influence next year's trends, all while being recorded
by ring cameras that would use the footage for marketing.
The speed defied historical precedent. In less than a decade,
Halloween shifted from a community based celebration to a digitally mediated,

(01:16:32):
corporately surveilled performance. Children who once roamed neighbourhoods in anonymous
masks now performed for cameras they couldn't see, creating content
for platforms they were too young to join, generating data
for companies that would track them for life. The Celts
believed that on Sowin, the boundary between the world of

(01:16:53):
the living and dead became permeable. The boundary that dissolves
now is between private and public, between authentic experience and
performed experience, between community celebration and corporate surveillance. Every Halloween,
we crossed that threshold willingly, trading privacy for the illusion

(01:17:13):
of security, authenticity for validation traditions for trending hashtags. During
the nineteen nineties, something started happening in church parking lots
across America as October nights grew cold and parents grew anxious.
A new Halloween tradition was being born, not from ancient
customs or immigrant culture, but from modern fears and suburban geography.

(01:17:38):
The origin story of trunk or treat breads like a
parable of American fear. The practice emerged as a church
led movement, possibly originating specifically with the LDS Church. By
the early nineteen nineties, religious communities were rethinking Halloween. In
nineteen ninety, a mother of five attending a church trunk
or treat event in Sacramento told, we know where the

(01:18:01):
candy's coming from, so we know it's safe and they're
not out on the streets. Her words revealed dual anxieties,
fear of contaminated candy and fear of streets themselves. The
neighborhood had become the threat. The movement spread across the
Bible Belt rapidly. By nineteen ninety two, Reverend Mark Irons,
pastor of Park Place Christian Church in Wichita Falls, Texas, explained,

(01:18:24):
we're doing it because parents are real uncomfortable about letting
their kids go out into the community. The community itself,
That foundational American ideal had become something to protect children from.
More of our special Halloween episode of Weird Darkness when

(01:18:46):
we return, and if you've missed any part of this hour,
if you have to step away and not be able
to hear the rest of it, or maybe you didn't
hear the other hour of the show, you can hear
the entire story on my website at Weirddarkness dot com
to a quick search for Halloween's heinous history. In fact,
while you're there, you can get a print out version

(01:19:06):
of everything that I've talked about. October is birthday month
for Weird Darkness. This year makes ten years of doing

(01:19:27):
the show. But while it's our birthday, we want the
gifts to go to those who help people who suffer
from depression, anxiety, or thoughts of suicide or self harm.
That's what our annual Overcoming the Darkness campaign is all about.
It's the only fundraiser I have all year long. You
can bring hope to those who are lost in the
darkness of depression. You can make a donation right now

(01:19:47):
at Weird Darkness dot com slash Hope. I'll close out
the fundraiser at the end of October and announce how
much we raised. The more we raise, the more people
we can help to donate, Get more information about the
fundraiser and the the organizations were supporting, or find hope
for yourself or someone you know who are fighting depression.
Visit Weirddarkness dot com slash hope. Please donate now while

(01:20:09):
you're thinking about it. Weird Darkness dot com slash hope.
Around twenty ten, Halloween spending patterns shifted. What had been

(01:20:30):
a one night event for children morphed into a month
long display of disposable income. By twenty twenty three, seventy
three percent of Americans were participating in Halloween activities, up
from sixty nine percent in twenty twenty two, but participation
now meant production. Total Halloween spending reached a record twelve

(01:20:51):
point two billion dollars in twenty twenty three, with consumers
spending an average of one hundred eight dollars twenty four
cents per person. The breakdown four point one billion dollars
on costumes, three point nine billion dollars on decorations, and
three point six billion dollars on candy. Decorations, barely a
retail category in the nineteen nineties, now commanded billions. The

(01:21:16):
rise of Halloween gifting showed competitive escalation. Most clearly, parents
created boo baskets, decorative containers filled with Halloween themed toys
and treats, secretively delivered two neighbors weeks before October thirty first.
What began as a simple gesture mutated into an arms race.

(01:21:37):
Pinterest boards filled with fifty boo basket ideas. Social media
groups formed to share and compete over basket designs. Parents
who had never heard of boo baskets felt obligated to
create them. House decorations transformed from simple to spectacular in
the nineteen nineties, cardboard skeletons and carved pumpkins sufficed. By

(01:22:01):
twenty twenty four, sixty eight percent planned to hand out candy.
But this meant theatrical productions. Home Owners spent thousands on animatronics,
projection systems, synchronized light shows, requiring programming knowledge. The pet
costume industry emerged as the most absurd indicator. The pet
costume market reached seven hundred million dollars triple twenty ten. Levels.

(01:22:26):
Dogs and cats required costume budgets, photoshoots, social media accounts.
Popular pet costumes included pumpkins, eleven percent, hot dogs, seven percent,
vats four percent, bumblebees three percent, and spiders three percent.
Halloween's temporal expansion represented its strangest transformation. A single night

(01:22:48):
of costumed mischief stretched into a two month retail season.
By twenty twenty four, to ten consumers planned to begin
Halloween shopping in September or earlier. Twenty twenty four, retailers
stocked Halloween merchandise alongside Fourth of July decorations. This expansion
served multiple functions. Retailers extended their lucrative season, consumers got

(01:23:13):
more time for elaborate displays, but Halloween was transforming from
an event to a lifestyle, a two month alternative reality
where death became decoration. The extreme Haunts represented this expansion's endpoint.
Mckemi Manor, operating year round, offered tours lasting up to
ten hours previously up to thirty six hours, requiring participants

(01:23:37):
to sign a forty page waiver listing risks including having
teeth extracted, being tattooed, and having fingernails removed. During these tours,
employees could physically assault patrons, waterboard them, force them to
eat and drink unknown substances, have them bound and gagged,
and engage in other forms of physical and psychological torture.

(01:24:00):
The attraction maintained a self reported waiting list of over
twenty seven thousand people, despite a petition calling it a
torture chamber under disguise reaching over sixty five thousand signatures.
Laura Hurtz Brotherton reported that during her twenty sixteen visit,
she repeatedly used her safe word for several minutes before

(01:24:22):
employees stopped torturing her, and she was later treated at
a hospital for extensive injuries. Yet people kept signing up.
These experiences revealed something about modern American life. People were
so desperate to feel genuine fear that they would pay
to be tortured. The safe Halloween of trunk or treats

(01:24:43):
and led pumpkins created a counter market for actual terror.
Every new Halloween tradition emphasized safety while creating different dangers.
Trunk or treat protected children from traffic, but concentrated them
in parking lots where cars maneuvered in tight spaces. Ring
doorbells prevented a stranger danger but created surveillance networks. Extreme

(01:25:09):
haunts provided controlled fear but sometimes resulted in actual injury.
Child psychologist David Miller of the University of Albany pointed
out there's little evidence that traditional trick or treating was
ever actually dangerous. He observed, I think one of the
things about tricker treating that we don't sufficiently appreciate is

(01:25:29):
a sense of trust we put in our neighbors when
kids go out trick or treating. Every safety measure eroded
that trust. The new rituals revealed American anxieties, fear of
strangers in histories safest era, need for control and chaos,
desire for community without engagement, hunger for authentic experience in

(01:25:50):
mediated lives. Halloween became a mirror reflecting social fears, the
terror of unstructured time, unmonitored children, uncontrolled interactions. The parking
lot replaced the neighborhood. The schedule replaced spontaneity. The surveillance
camera replaced the honor system. In making Halloween safer, we

(01:26:11):
made it more dangerous, not to bodies, but to our
ability to trust. Every Halloween product promises to create the
community that modern American life destroyed. Trunk or treat exists
because neighborhoods don't function. Ring doorbells sell because people don't
know their neighbors. Extreme haunts thrive because everyday life lacks intensity.

(01:26:33):
Three point four million Americans bought surveillance devices, despite eighty
seven percent not understanding how their data would be used.
They weren't purchasing security. Crime rates were at historic lows.
They were buying the illusion of community watch, even if
that watcher was Amazon's algorithm. Ring's partnerships with over two

(01:26:54):
thousand local police and fire departments created what MIT Media
Labs researchers called the first nationwide map of RING users
and usage patterns. The Neighbors app transformed every neighbor into
a potential threat, then sold technology to monitor those threats.
MIT found no strong evidence that RING cameras deter crime,

(01:27:16):
despite being their primary selling point. The extreme haunt industry
represents Halloween capitalism's final form. Mcamie Manor offered a twenty
thousand dollars prize for completion that founder Russ mccamee later removed,
believing people were going through the experience for their wrong reasons.
No one has ever completed the tour. Impossibility was the

(01:27:39):
point the business model. Create impossible challenges, generate viral controversy,
maintain waiting lists through scarcity. A change dot Org petition
claiming participants had been drugged and assaulted reached one hundred
ninety three thousand signatures. The controversy only increased demand. Every
new story and viral vas video became free advertising for

(01:28:01):
people desperate to feel something real. Social media transformed Halloween
from community celebration into content creation. Sixty percent of consumers
find costume ideas on Instagram and TikTok. Businesses say a
twenty percent ROI increase from Halloween specific ads. With six
hundred million dollars spent annually on Halloween advertising, Forty four

(01:28:25):
percent of consumers shop for Halloween on Amazon. Nearly half
of all purchases through one corporation, whose algorithms now shape
the holiday more than any tradition. Halloween no longer ends
November first. It persists in databases year round. Companies track
every purchase, post and doorbell activation, using the data to

(01:28:46):
shape next year's products. Even sustainability became commodified, eco friendly
decorations commanding premium prices. Turning guilt about consumption into another
consumable product reveals what American society has become. While Christmas
maintains its religious veneer and Thanksgiving preserves its gratitude mythology.

(01:29:09):
Halloween shows us plainly, we're consumers performing community through commerce,
seeking authentic experience through manufactured terror, creating meaning through marketed traditions.
October thirty first marks a transition between worlds, not between
the living and dead, but between the America we pretend
exists and the America we've created. Jack A Lanterns glow

(01:29:34):
from porches, but their foam now led lit, Amazon ordered,
Instagram documented children address as ghosts, but the real ghosts
are us, haunting a holiday we've killed through commerce, performing
forgotten rituals. We no longer understand the call comes from
inside the house. It always has. We just pay extra

(01:29:57):
for the camera to watch ourselves answer. Thanks for listening.
If you missed any part of this special Halloween episode,
or if you'd like to hear it again, you can

(01:30:19):
visit Weirddarkness dot com and do a search for Halloween's
Heinous History. That's the podcast version that goes a lot
more in depth than I had time for tonight. Just
do a search for Halloween's Heinous Hisstory at Weird Darkness
dot com. You'll also find a print version of everything
I've talked about. If you find that easier to share

(01:30:39):
with friends, family, or coworkers. They'll probably find it very
interesting at this time of year. While you're on the website,
you can also visit my Darknews blog for stories that
never make it to the radio show or the podcast.
If you like what you heard tonight, please tell somebody
you know about the show, Somebody you know who loves
the paranormal or strange store stories, true crime, monsters, or

(01:31:02):
unsolved mysteries like you do. All stories used in Weird
Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise. Weird
Darkness is a registered trademark copyright Weird Darkness. And now
that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you
with a little light Ephesians five, verse eleven. Take no
part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness. Instead

(01:31:27):
expose them. And a final thought from HP Lovecraft, from
even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent. I'm
darn Marler, thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness,
and I hope you have a happy and safe Halloween.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

The Joe Rogan Experience

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}HALLOWEEN: 2,000 Years of Heinous History

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

The Joe Rogan Experience

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

HALLOWEEN: 2,000 Years of Heinous History

On Purpose with Jay Shetty