On the night of October 31, many Americans...
celebrate the traditions of Halloween by dressing in costumes and telling tales of witches and ghosts. Children parade from house to house collecting candy by the glow of jack-o'-lanterns and the light of the moon.
The history of Halloween in America has a darker side however. For most of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, Halloween was more trick than treat. Bands of mischief makers roamed city streets and country roads blowing horns and wreaking havoc upon residences and businesses alike. Often special police were appointed to keep damage to a minimum. An interview with William Flynn in American Life Histories, 1936-1940, records a joke Flynn played on local boys while special policing on a cold Halloween night. After getting the keys to the town garage, he built a fire there to warm himself. Then, Flynn slipped out and told the boys he would leave the garage unlocked for them to use as well.
In a short time there was about thirty boys in there so I just locked the door and kept them there until breakfast time the next morning and I believe I had every boy in town that was out Hallowe'eing for there wasn't a thing disturbed in the town that night. Writing about his nineteenth-century boyhood in Minnesota, Frank G. O'Brien recalls Halloween as a night when "the leaders of the fun took matters into their own hands and the whole town was at their mercy." In addition to switching signs between the town doctor and the local undertaker, pranksters thought nothing of causing major inconveniences. After one Halloween revel, O'Brien writes:
The next morning the plank sidewalk on a business thoroughfare was found to be at least five feet from the ground and as securely braced and nailed as if it had been placed there by order of the city council, R. B. Graves, mayor, and attested by W. W. Wales, city clerk. This "elevation" would often extend for nearly a block at different locations in front of business houses, and necessitated considerable work on the part of the proprietor and clerks to get matters in shape to receive the morning customers. Frank G. O'Brien, "Old Time Halloween Doings,"
Minnesota Pioneer Sketches: From the Personal Recollections and Observations of a Pioneer Resident, 1904.
Pioneering the Upper Midwest, ca. 1820-1910The next morning the plank sidewalk on a business thoroughfare was found to be at least five feet from the ground and as securely braced and nailed as if it had been placed there by order of the city council, R. B. Graves, mayor, and attested by W. W. Wales, city clerk. This "elevation" would often extend for nearly a block at different locations in front of business houses, and necessitated considerable work on the part of the proprietor and clerks to get matters in shape to receive the morning customers. Frank G. O'Brien, "Old Time Halloween Doings,"
Minnesota Pioneer Sketches: From the Personal Recollections and Observations of a Pioneer Resident, 1904.
Pioneering the Upper Midwest, ca. 1820-1910
