All of those weeks and days planning and working on your Halloween costume finally pays off today, as we welcome the scariest day of the year (well, besides Black Friday) known as All Hallows’ Eve, aka Halloween. Whether you’re getting ready to go trick or treating with family or meeting up with friends later tonight at that costume party, this is the day when the dead and those spooky things lurking in the dark, come out and join the festivities.
Halloween’s long history dating back to its Celtic origins is littered with superstitions, myths and urban legends, warning us of the dangers and evil that could be waiting for us on this dark holiday. We’ve seen the scary movies, read the reddit first-person posts and have even spotted those crazy clowns terrorizing the world, but what should we keep an eye out for and what’s fiction?
Is a masked deranged killer waiting to ruin our night? Is there something sinister in that bag of candy? Are there names we should avoid calling out on this hellish evening? Using our otherworldly black cauldron, we turn on the lights on Halloween, exploring and exposing the truths on some of the most popular and feared superstitions and myths!
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Jack-o’-Lanterns
From September through November our lives are taken over by pumpkin everything! From what we eat, drink and smell, America’s obsession with the large orange squash has gone beyond the normal love of pumpkin pie. But long before this pumpkin spice craze, pumpkins were — and still are — the face of Halloween, specifically in its jack-o’-lantern form. During the Halloween season, you’ll see them in stores and in front of homes, carved and decorated into various jack-o’-lanterns.
The story behind the jack-o’-lantern revolves around a trickster named Jack who lived in Ireland and was banned from both Heaven and Hell. Forced to walk alone in limbo, Jack carved a lantern out of a turnip, placing an ember inside to help him through the darkness. Over time, America has swapped out the turnip for the pumpkin and thus a Halloween icon was created. Whether used to ward off evil spirits or carried by a headless rider, jack-o’-lanterns can be unsettling because we’re not sure if those large grins are hiding good or dark intentions!
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Tainted Candy
Starting at an early age, we’ve all been taught to not take candy from strangers…except on Halloween! The one day a year children go door-to-door asking for candy and treats is also the day parents believe some sick individual has possibly given their child dangerous tainted candy. This Halloween urban legend has spread so fast and feared as truth by many adults that schools and news reports issue yearly warnings on what candy to avoid. So is there a madman sticking razor blades in apples? Have kids become sick by chocolate bars that were dipped in poison? Nope, it’s all just an urban legend as police have never reported children getting poisoned by Halloween candy.
The case that gave this legend fuel is from Halloween 1974, when eight-year-old Timothy Marc O’Bryan died after eating Pixy Stixs that were laced with cyanide. Tragically the monster that gave Timothy the deadly candy was his own father Ronald O’Bryan. In hopes of collecting on life insurance policies on his children, Ronald gave Timothy, his sister and two other children the bad candy. Luckily the three other children didn’t eat it, but this sad case helped spread the notion that tampered candy was a very real thing. While parents will always be disturbed that their child might come into contact with the darker side of Halloween, the only thing they should fear is candy corn!
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Black Cats
A while back I had a feud with a black cat that had a habit of sleeping on the hood of my car. Does that mean that I’ve been marked for bad luck by my feline foe? Quite possibly, considering how things have played out since. But enough about my personal woes, as life for black cats must be tough. A universal symbol of bad luck, the black cat has been saddled with a reputation of being a servant of evil. Starting from the medieval ages to the Salem witch trials, black cats as companions to witches has been a widely held notion, because everyone knows that next to her trusty broom, a practitioner of black magic needs her kitty.
In addition to black cats being seen as “familiars” to members of the occult, these cats are said to break the thin threshold to the afterlife on Halloween, allowing them to communicate with the dead. Because of this myth, there’s been stories of black cats being adopted near Halloween only to be sacrificed by devil worshippers. Many animal shelters will still hold off on adoptions until after Halloween because of this concern.
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Satanic Worshippers
Halloween is seen by many God-fearing people as the Devil’s holiday. They refuse to partake in any of the festivities, believing the holiday promotes all aspects of evil. People like Pat Robertson have dubbed Halloween the “festival for demonic spirits.” Odds are there probably are troubled individuals walking around in costumes with wicked intentions. But does Halloween have an increase in Satanic crimes or murders?
If you asked people during the 1980s they would certainly say yes, as the “Satanic Panic” paranoia arose in smaller communities across the country. Horror movies like House of the Devil have taken this premise and created scary films out of the fear. When not sacrificing black cats, people believed Devil worshippers would also be placing subliminal messages in Heavy Metal albums instructing youths to commit heinous acts. Parents also feared robed Satanists would target children out trick-or-treating, kidnapping them for perverse sexual acts or rituals. While there certainly were some dark child abuse cases in the '80s, there’s been nothing of substance tying Halloween to a rise of satanic crimes on October 31.
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Evil In The Mirror
There’s no better day to scare your friends than on Halloween. Kids in particular know this and love scaring each other with campfire stories, horror films or by daring one another to stand in front of a mirror and summon a dark entity.
An immensely popular urban legend that we’ve all tried at some point in our youths, is trying to summon Bloody Mary, Candyman or some variation of a dark specter. In a nutshell, you stand in front of a mirror (usually the bathroom), sometimes holding a candle, depending on the version you’ve heard, and call out the vengeful spirit’s name three or five times in a row. So what happens after you do it? Does Bloody Mary or Candyman appear? The story goes that only bad things will occur upon calling them, from having your eyes ripped out to being slashed to death by a hook, or simply ending up in the mirror with the entity, never to be seen again. Sounds fun, right?
There’s nothing to worry about, as outside of a horror film there’s been no real victims. Of course, if you want to try your luck, you can find out tonight if you dare.
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Scary Killer Clowns
While everyone’s been focused on this year’s presidential election, the real threat to our nation’s security has been slowly sneaking up one animal balloon at a time. Communities all across the country are under siege by clowns and these white gloved waving jesters aren’t here for laughs.
Clowns scaring people or traumatizing kids isn’t something new as it’s been occurring since the turn of the 20th century. But over the past couple of years, the “creepy clown” phenomenon has seen an influx of reports flooding the nightly news and our Facebook news feeds. The rise of clowns can be directly tied to social media and YouTube, giving exposure to pranksters and troublemakers looking to make a name for themselves. Just a couple of weeks ago, a couple was arrested for leaving their toddler at home while they went out dressed as clowns to terrorize neighbors.
Should Halloween be blamed for this craze? With more and more incidents occurring ahead of the holiday, some authorities are banning clown costumes, while Target had pulled clown masks from their stores. Halloween offers up the perfect cover for this mischievous behavior to occur, just like we’ve seen in the past with Devils Night/Hell Night. While the chances of Stephen King’s Pennywise snatching up kids on Halloween is relatively low, criminals and troublemakers donning costumes to commit bad acts is a real threat.
Have a Happy Halloween!
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