October 26, 2025 • 12 mins
Guest host Connie Willis and author Lesley Bannatyne trace the origins of a treasured Halloween tradition.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
One of the traditions that I absolutely love and adore
and it just it wouldn't be Halloween without this are
the jack O lanterns. And you know, all the different faces,
all the different ways that it's lit up.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
You know what, how did all that begin?
Speaker 4 (00:20):
That's a good one because if you spend maybe you know,
two minutes on the internet, you get this story about
stingy Jack, and it's a folk tale. It's got many
many variations, but basically it's a guy who tricks the
devil three times. He's a nasty guy, Jack, and he
(00:43):
tricks the devil three times, and when he finally dies
and goes to hell, the devil says, you know, no,
you can't come in here, and he throws a lit
coal to Jack and says, you know, go start a
hell of your own.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Go one.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
And so the jack o lantern story that you read
on the internet is really a story that describes this
wandering light. So you know, how do we get from
this wandering light, this fool's fire that's called or corpse
candle or will of the whist? How do you get
(01:20):
from that to our jackal lantern, which does not really wander,
but sits on a porch and is lit. So there's
that in common. It's it comes through an American trick
that kids did early in the nineteenth century where they
would take a pumpkin from a field, steal one. There
were tons, there were tons of pumpkins, and carve the face,
(01:45):
carved two faces, carved three faces. But then they would
hang it off of a stick, light a candle in it,
and float it in front of somebody's window to scare
them to death and then run away real quick. So
that's where you get the idea. They started to call
this the jack o lantern trick because you know, you
(02:06):
got a picture this, there's no electricity, it's dark, and
all of a sudden in your window is this like glowing,
weird orange face. It's terrifying. But then the kids would
run away, and whoever was they were scaring would run
after them. So that was how you get this light
that moves, this jack o lantern light that moves. And
(02:29):
it was when we started throwing real Halloween parties in America,
which didn't happen until after the Civil War, that we
brought the idea of decorating Halloween parties was bringing the
outdoors inside. So pumpkins were a big part of that.
Like corn stocks were a big part of that, and
cabbages and different plants and things. But that's when the
(02:52):
jack o lantern stopped moving and just sat as a
table decoration or the or a front walk decoration. And
that's where it came from. It was, I guess, originally
a trick and then a decoration, and then it became
a tradition. I mean, we carved Japical lanterns because probably
(03:15):
our parents.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Did, you know, Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
So you don't think back hundreds of years as to
why we do this. You know, there's no deep meaning
in it. There have been meanings given to it. I
mean back in Europe and this is a different thing,
but back in Europe, around All Souls Day, which is
November second, very close to our Halloween, people would put
(03:40):
carved out turnips in their windows to you know, attract
the soul's home, kind of like the Mexicans do with
their Day of the Dead altars. You want to attract
your dead souls back home for a visit. So there
were carved faces used for that. But I don't think
kids in this country think, well, let's you know, let's
(04:02):
bring Grandpa back with my jack o lantern, right right,
you put it on your front porch. It welcomes trick
or treaters.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, That's one of the things that I remember as
a trick or treater was if there was a jackal
lantern and it had a candle in it. You know
some now we have, you know, fake little candles, but
if it had a light in it, you knew you
could go up and ask for candy.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
But if it did, you would pass it right.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Yes, it was a welcome. It was we're doing this,
you know, we're we're here and we've got candy, so
come on in.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And then there'd be that couple that would forget, they'd
run out of candy and they'd forget to blow out
the candle on the jackal lanner, and then they'd.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Get all mad at you when you rang the doorbeller.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
The you know, you're like, hey man, you had the
light on.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Okay, Yeah, they got a hustle looking for you know,
like beef jerky sticks or any that they can Hey,
you know what.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
We went to the house of a dentist. You know
what he gave out, don't you, Oh thrushes. It was like, no,
we're skipping his place. It's just not fun.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
No, it was yeah, yeah, well, you know, I guess
that's a way to not get kids to ring the
doorbell at one point, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
But you know the cool thing about jack O Leonards too.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Is it's gotten so amazingly creative. I mean, it went
from just the triangle eyes, nose, mouth, you know, with
many triangles, to man, these people they'll draw the they'll
cut up, or they'll carve the entire Wizard of Oz
characters all the way around it. I'm sure they could
(05:48):
do that with the Harry Potter creators. And it's it's
just amazing how creative people can get with these pumpkins,
turning in them to amazing jack O Lannards and I
like to do the one trick that I saw someone
do that I just thought it was cool because I.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Like scary Halloween.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
You know, when people just wear something that you can
wear any time of the year. I'm like, come on,
this is Halloween. Get spooky, get Frankenstein, get Dracula. It
goes that kind of thing. But I love when the
jackal lantern where someone had done it, and I just
thought that is wonderful. Where they clean out the seeds
but they still have all the good pumpkin guts and
(06:26):
you let that hang as you got the candle in it,
and not only does it burn and smell really good
by the way, but it looks like, you know, the
guts of the pumpkin is there and coming out.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
I just think that's wonderful.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
And how popular pumpkin festivals have become, like in the
last twenty years, where you can just go and there's
five hundred, there's a thousand, there's five thousand carved pumpkins
all along a woodland path or on a hill. I mean,
they're absolutely spectacular. I know in the beginning, at least
(07:02):
and maybe it still is, it was art school kids
who were helping to carve these things, so you had
people with real talent putting it to work on Halloween.
But carving all those real pumpkins is an amazing seat.
It takes so many people. It's spectacular to look at.
But those pumpkins, you know, you've got real candles in those,
(07:26):
those have to be replaced, so it's not just that
they do it once they keep doing it and keep
doing it and replacing the pumpkins that are kind of sagging.
It is amazing. And I know restaurants order them for
display that are amazing scenes of like whole movies on
the side of a pumpkin. It's truly become an art form.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
When you were talking about lining them up.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I mean, I loved being able to go to where
pumpkin patches are and you get to go pick out
your pumpkins, especially when you see the little kids getting
to run around and pick their pumpkin and try to
pick it up and carry it. You know, that's fun
to see that kind of thing. But you have all
that hate hast axe and then you'll get on the
backside of a John Deere and it takes you to
certain areas and you know, you get to go grab
(08:17):
pumpkins that are just all over this acreage of a
farm or something like that, and you go at night
and they're all lit up like you're saying, with the
candles and just smell so good. Just fun, you know,
just pure fun and family fun like you said.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
It is it is. Yeah, I love it. I was
in touch a long time ago. With one of the
very first guys who put together a pumpkin festival. And
what's amazing about Halloween to me, and what continues to
be amazing, is that how generous a holiday it is.
I mean, on no other holiday do we open our
(08:50):
door to strangers, right, So.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
There's that especially creepy clowns and stuff. Yeah, exactly, raby.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Clowns come into your house. You know, we spend fifty
fifty bucks one hundred bucks on handy that we give
away to kids we don't now And talking to the
original pumpkin carving festival guy, he just did it out
of the goodness of his heart. He wanted to entertain
his neighborhood. So he started with fifty carved pumpkins, and
(09:20):
then it grew to one hundred, and then he need
a lot of help, and then it's five hundred, and
then it's five thousand. It's just it starts from a
very generous place, this Halloween that we create for each other.
And you know, all the people that are doing those
wonderful yard displays that take hours and hours and hours
of work, it's for everybody else, you know, It's it's
(09:44):
something they do and invest a lot of time and
money in but then they give it away. It's for
the entertainment of their neighbors.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Ton of got a lot of generous aspects of this holiday.
Lots of holidays do, but this one does in particular.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, And you know, it's it's funny that it just
kind of comes up, it happens, and then it's over.
And the next day I'm like, I'm done with it.
I don't want to put your skeleton.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Away, don't leave it out anymore. I'm done with it,
you know.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
But I can handle it for three weeks beforehand, four
weeks beforehand, but the next day I am totally done.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
One of the things.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
That I really like too are the different costumes along
the way. How did costume even occur? And remember like
when we were little bitty tikes and and we had
these stupid little Now I'm just saying, but they were
these stupid masks that you put on that little rubber
band in the back and you were burning up as
a kid, you couldn't breathe.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
And now and.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Then it went into rubber ones where you couldn't breathe.
But now, I mean they're just so extravagant.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah, and expensive too. How did we come to costumes, Well, Halloween,
in this country, we used to dress up a lot
more than we do now, unless you're lucky enough to
live in New Orleans, we dress up once a year
and that's on Halloween. But it used to be they
you know, late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, people love costumes.
(11:12):
They dressed up on Valentine's Day, they had costume balls.
On New Year's Eve, they had you know, the Extra
Bonnet Parade. That was kind of a costume thing, and
so dressing up on Halloween just made sense. You dressed
up on a lot of holidays and you went to
parties in a costume, a fancy dress costume, but the
Halloween ones were spooky because Halloween is a spooky nighttime holiday.
(11:37):
And so we first started using costumes for parties to
their dress up and go to a masquerade party. And
then they became more and more popular as we started
throwing town wide parties and big parades on Halloween where
everybody could dress up and you needed a costume, and
(11:58):
they just grew exponentially. And I do remember those little
costumes of the rubber abandon the elastic, and you know,
you couldn't see through it. The eyeholes were never really
cut out right. You couldn't quite see all the way
through it. And the dress or whatever you had on
(12:19):
was incredibly flammable.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yes, let's go buy that pumpkin with all the candles
in it.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
One of the traditions that I absolutely love and adore
and it just it wouldn't be Halloween without this are
the jack O lanterns. And you know, all the different faces,
all the different ways that it's lit up.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
You know what, how did all that begin?
Speaker 4 (00:20):
That's a good one because if you spend maybe you know,
two minutes on the internet, you get this story about
stingy Jack, and it's a folk tale. It's got many
many variations, but basically it's a guy who tricks the
devil three times. He's a nasty guy, Jack, and he
(00:43):
tricks the devil three times, and when he finally dies
and goes to hell, the devil says, you know, no,
you can't come in here, and he throws a lit
coal to Jack and says, you know, go start a
hell of your own.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Go one.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
And so the jack o lantern story that you read
on the internet is really a story that describes this
wandering light. So you know, how do we get from
this wandering light, this fool's fire that's called or corpse
candle or will of the whist? How do you get
(01:20):
from that to our jackal lantern, which does not really wander,
but sits on a porch and is lit. So there's
that in common. It's it comes through an American trick
that kids did early in the nineteenth century where they
would take a pumpkin from a field, steal one. There
were tons, there were tons of pumpkins, and carve the face,
(01:45):
carved two faces, carved three faces. But then they would
hang it off of a stick, light a candle in it,
and float it in front of somebody's window to scare
them to death and then run away real quick. So
that's where you get the idea. They started to call
this the jack o lantern trick because you know, you
(02:06):
got a picture this, there's no electricity, it's dark, and
all of a sudden in your window is this like glowing,
weird orange face. It's terrifying. But then the kids would
run away, and whoever was they were scaring would run
after them. So that was how you get this light
that moves, this jack o lantern light that moves. And
(02:29):
it was when we started throwing real Halloween parties in America,
which didn't happen until after the Civil War, that we
brought the idea of decorating Halloween parties was bringing the
outdoors inside. So pumpkins were a big part of that.
Like corn stocks were a big part of that, and
cabbages and different plants and things. But that's when the
(02:52):
jack o lantern stopped moving and just sat as a
table decoration or the or a front walk decoration. And
that's where it came from. It was, I guess, originally
a trick and then a decoration, and then it became
a tradition. I mean, we carved Japical lanterns because probably
(03:15):
our parents.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Did, you know, Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
So you don't think back hundreds of years as to
why we do this. You know, there's no deep meaning
in it. There have been meanings given to it. I
mean back in Europe and this is a different thing,
but back in Europe, around All Souls Day, which is
November second, very close to our Halloween, people would put
(03:40):
carved out turnips in their windows to you know, attract
the soul's home, kind of like the Mexicans do with
their Day of the Dead altars. You want to attract
your dead souls back home for a visit. So there
were carved faces used for that. But I don't think
kids in this country think, well, let's you know, let's
(04:02):
bring Grandpa back with my jack o lantern, right right,
you put it on your front porch. It welcomes trick
or treaters.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, That's one of the things that I remember as
a trick or treater was if there was a jackal
lantern and it had a candle in it. You know
some now we have, you know, fake little candles, but
if it had a light in it, you knew you
could go up and ask for candy.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
But if it did, you would pass it right.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Yes, it was a welcome. It was we're doing this,
you know, we're we're here and we've got candy, so
come on in.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And then there'd be that couple that would forget, they'd
run out of candy and they'd forget to blow out
the candle on the jackal lanner, and then they'd.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Get all mad at you when you rang the doorbeller.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
The you know, you're like, hey man, you had the
light on.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Okay, Yeah, they got a hustle looking for you know,
like beef jerky sticks or any that they can Hey,
you know what.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
We went to the house of a dentist. You know
what he gave out, don't you, Oh thrushes. It was like, no,
we're skipping his place. It's just not fun.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
No, it was yeah, yeah, well, you know, I guess
that's a way to not get kids to ring the
doorbell at one point, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
But you know the cool thing about jack O Leonards too.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Is it's gotten so amazingly creative. I mean, it went
from just the triangle eyes, nose, mouth, you know, with
many triangles, to man, these people they'll draw the they'll
cut up, or they'll carve the entire Wizard of Oz
characters all the way around it. I'm sure they could
(05:48):
do that with the Harry Potter creators. And it's it's
just amazing how creative people can get with these pumpkins,
turning in them to amazing jack O Lannards and I
like to do the one trick that I saw someone
do that I just thought it was cool because I.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Like scary Halloween.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
You know, when people just wear something that you can
wear any time of the year. I'm like, come on,
this is Halloween. Get spooky, get Frankenstein, get Dracula. It
goes that kind of thing. But I love when the
jackal lantern where someone had done it, and I just
thought that is wonderful. Where they clean out the seeds
but they still have all the good pumpkin guts and
(06:26):
you let that hang as you got the candle in it,
and not only does it burn and smell really good
by the way, but it looks like, you know, the
guts of the pumpkin is there and coming out.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
I just think that's wonderful.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
And how popular pumpkin festivals have become, like in the
last twenty years, where you can just go and there's
five hundred, there's a thousand, there's five thousand carved pumpkins
all along a woodland path or on a hill. I mean,
they're absolutely spectacular. I know in the beginning, at least
(07:02):
and maybe it still is, it was art school kids
who were helping to carve these things, so you had
people with real talent putting it to work on Halloween.
But carving all those real pumpkins is an amazing seat.
It takes so many people. It's spectacular to look at.
But those pumpkins, you know, you've got real candles in those,
(07:26):
those have to be replaced, so it's not just that
they do it once they keep doing it and keep
doing it and replacing the pumpkins that are kind of sagging.
It is amazing. And I know restaurants order them for
display that are amazing scenes of like whole movies on
the side of a pumpkin. It's truly become an art form.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
When you were talking about lining them up.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I mean, I loved being able to go to where
pumpkin patches are and you get to go pick out
your pumpkins, especially when you see the little kids getting
to run around and pick their pumpkin and try to
pick it up and carry it. You know, that's fun
to see that kind of thing. But you have all
that hate hast axe and then you'll get on the
backside of a John Deere and it takes you to
certain areas and you know, you get to go grab
(08:17):
pumpkins that are just all over this acreage of a
farm or something like that, and you go at night
and they're all lit up like you're saying, with the
candles and just smell so good. Just fun, you know,
just pure fun and family fun like you said.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
It is it is. Yeah, I love it. I was
in touch a long time ago. With one of the
very first guys who put together a pumpkin festival. And
what's amazing about Halloween to me, and what continues to
be amazing, is that how generous a holiday it is.
I mean, on no other holiday do we open our
(08:50):
door to strangers, right, So.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
There's that especially creepy clowns and stuff. Yeah, exactly, raby.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Clowns come into your house. You know, we spend fifty
fifty bucks one hundred bucks on handy that we give
away to kids we don't now And talking to the
original pumpkin carving festival guy, he just did it out
of the goodness of his heart. He wanted to entertain
his neighborhood. So he started with fifty carved pumpkins, and
(09:20):
then it grew to one hundred, and then he need
a lot of help, and then it's five hundred, and
then it's five thousand. It's just it starts from a
very generous place, this Halloween that we create for each other.
And you know, all the people that are doing those
wonderful yard displays that take hours and hours and hours
of work, it's for everybody else, you know, It's it's
(09:44):
something they do and invest a lot of time and
money in but then they give it away. It's for
the entertainment of their neighbors.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Ton of got a lot of generous aspects of this holiday.
Lots of holidays do, but this one does in particular.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, And you know, it's it's funny that it just
kind of comes up, it happens, and then it's over.
And the next day I'm like, I'm done with it.
I don't want to put your skeleton.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Away, don't leave it out anymore. I'm done with it,
you know.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
But I can handle it for three weeks beforehand, four
weeks beforehand, but the next day I am totally done.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
One of the things.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
That I really like too are the different costumes along
the way. How did costume even occur? And remember like
when we were little bitty tikes and and we had
these stupid little Now I'm just saying, but they were
these stupid masks that you put on that little rubber
band in the back and you were burning up as
a kid, you couldn't breathe.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
And now and.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Then it went into rubber ones where you couldn't breathe.
But now, I mean they're just so extravagant.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah, and expensive too. How did we come to costumes, Well, Halloween,
in this country, we used to dress up a lot
more than we do now, unless you're lucky enough to
live in New Orleans, we dress up once a year
and that's on Halloween. But it used to be they
you know, late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, people love costumes.
(11:12):
They dressed up on Valentine's Day, they had costume balls.
On New Year's Eve, they had you know, the Extra
Bonnet Parade. That was kind of a costume thing, and
so dressing up on Halloween just made sense. You dressed
up on a lot of holidays and you went to
parties in a costume, a fancy dress costume, but the
Halloween ones were spooky because Halloween is a spooky nighttime holiday.
(11:37):
And so we first started using costumes for parties to
their dress up and go to a masquerade party. And
then they became more and more popular as we started
throwing town wide parties and big parades on Halloween where
everybody could dress up and you needed a costume, and
(11:58):
they just grew exponentially. And I do remember those little
costumes of the rubber abandon the elastic, and you know,
you couldn't see through it. The eyeholes were never really
cut out right. You couldn't quite see all the way
through it. And the dress or whatever you had on
(12:19):
was incredibly flammable.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yes, let's go buy that pumpkin with all the candles
in it.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
Host
George Noory
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