Tag: Satan

Show Notes

Modern Halloween emerges from diverse cultural and religious traditions, each contributing distinct elements to today’s celebrations. From the Celtic festival of Samhain to the Roman Catholic Hallowtide, this episode uncovers the historical threads that connect ancient celebrations to contemporary practices.

We examine the influences of Roman festivals like Pomonalia and Lemuria, investigate the connections to England’s Guy Fawkes Night, and explore parallels with Mexico’s Día de los Muertos. Our discussion reveals how these varied traditions merged to create today’s Halloween, with special attention to Salem’s emergence as America’s Halloween capital.

Featuring insights from past guests,  this episode offers a scholarly look at Halloween’s evolution while exploring its connections to witch hunts, folklore, and enduring cultural practices.

Buy Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, by Nicholas Rogers 

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Witch Hunt Episode: Halloween History and Traditions with Scott Culpepper

Witch Hunt Episode: Ain’t it a Scary Halloween with Sean and Carrie

Witch Hunt Episode: Rachel Christ-Doane on the Salem Witch Museum and the Life of Dorothy Good

Witch Hunt Episode: Scottish Witch Trials with Mary W. Craig

Witch Hunt Episode: Marion Gibson on Witchcraft a History in 13 Trials

Witch Hunt Episode: Malcolm Gaskill on the Ruin of All Witches

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Transcript

Sarah Jack: [00:00:00] I do not want to meet a malevolent lemur. That sounds scary.
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt and Happy Halloween! I'm Josh Hutchinson. 
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack O'Lantern. Thank you for joining us today for a Halloween discussion. 
Josh Hutchinson: Many traceable cultural and religious influences have shaped the holiday we know and love today.
Sarah Jack: Though Halloween stems largely from the marriage of the Christian celebration of All Hallows' Eve and the Celtic celebration of Samhain, the holiday also contains Roman and English elements and bears some relation to the Mexican Day of the Dead. 
Josh Hutchinson: In this episode, we'll talk about the ancient Roman holidays of Pomanalia, Vertumnalia, Parentalia, and Lemuria, Celtic Samhain, Roman Catholic Hallowtide, English Guy Fawkes Night, and Mexico's El Día de los Muertos. If it has anything to do with Halloween, we're covering it. 
Sarah Jack: Come with us as we explore how Halloween came to be what it is [00:01:00] today and how it has influenced popular culture. 
Josh Hutchinson: And of course, it wouldn't be Witch Hunt podcast without a discussion of witches, the devil, and other spooky Halloween fair. 
Sarah Jack: Finally, let's visit Salem and learn how it has become the prime destination for American Halloween celebrations. 
Josh Hutchinson: In a Halloween episode we did a year ago, Scott Culpepper told us.
Scott Culpepper: We have legendary ideas about where Halloween comes from. Probably most people have heard the term Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival, which supposedly is one of the precursors of Halloween. And a lot of people are aware of that, but they have a lot of folkloric sort of concepts of what that is, and rightfully so, because we really don't know much about what that festival was. Yeah, I think that is definitely one barrier to people learning more about the past of Halloween, and the legend that it's primarily a pagan holiday has really obscured the fact that it's [00:02:00] got those very strong Christian roots and origins. Especially fundamentalist Christians, they'll go off on the pagan rites, and maybe even Greek and Roman rites if they're a little bit better read, that may have been precursors to Halloween, but they don't acknowledge the very deep roots of the observance in the history of the church and the church's attempt to convert pagan peoples in the early medieval period. So definitely, yeah, I think fear, suspicion, and then just the willingness to accept legends that may not actually have had very little to do with the development of the holiday really obscures people's knowledge of the true origins. 
Scott Culpepper: And he told us about the importance of mythology to our contemporary understanding of Halloween. So much of what we think we know about the world is entangled with mythologies, and we all have our personal mythologies that we embrace. So it really is, it's a tricky thing. And sometimes the myth is enriching, the myth is empowering, the myth serves a good [00:03:00] purpose.
Josh Hutchinson: The word Halloween, first used in the 18th century, is derived from Hallow Even, a shortening of Hallow Evening, the night before All Saints' Day, which was November 1st. Along with All Souls' Day observed on November 2nd, this trio of important church observances was known as Allhallowtide. 
Sarah Jack: Before we go into the details of Hallowtide, let's explore some of the even more ancient roots of Halloween, beginning with related Roman feasts and festivals. 
Josh Hutchinson: It's hard to say exactly how much these Roman festivals have contributed to our modern Halloween festivities, but they may indeed have contributed to the Roman Catholic Church then instituting All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. Those could be connected to Roman festivals earlier. 
Sarah Jack: So it's possible that Roman festivals at least indirectly fed elements of Halloween. 
Josh Hutchinson: The first of these festivals that we'll discuss is Pomonalia, feast of the Roman [00:04:00] fruit tree goddess Pomona, which was held August 13th along with Vertumnalia, the feast of Pomona's husband, the god Vertumnus, who ruled the changing of seasons.
Josh Hutchinson: 
Sarah Jack: The titular Sean and Carrie McCabe from Ain't It Scary with Sean and Carrie podcast gave us some background information about this feast. 
Sean and Carrie: Everyone had different traditions going on, but the Romans, it's interesting because so many cultures had this sort of festival, the mark of the end of the harvest and the beginning of the cold seasons, because seasons don't really change, they change every year, but they haven't, they don't vary wildly. They're like, okay, next is when it gets dark and cold, and then it'll get warm and sunny again. So those were things that people would have celebrated since the beginning of time, because that was another common thing that we all [00:05:00] had. We all experienced when it got cold, and then we all experienced when it got warm again. 
Sean and Carrie: So the Romans had their own festival. The day's obviously a little wibbly wobbly, because the calendar is a newer thing than a lot of these traditions. But this would be the end of the harvest season for the Romans, and this would celebrate the goddess Pomona. 
Sean and Carrie: And this was the deity of the orchards and the harvest, and so they would have to pay tribute to her, because you want the harvest to be good again next year, so you want her to be happy with you. So you would have feasts of plenty, and that would be apples, nuts, and grapes, and orchard fruits, because orchards were a big thing in Rome and you know in that area and so you'd have this big feast and then put everything away for winter and those are the kinds of things that they would dry or try to preserve for the harder seasons.
Josh Hutchinson: In addition to the Feast of Pomona, the Roman festival Parentalia may also have contributed to [00:06:00] Halloween. 
Sarah Jack: This festival was marked by a nine day observance,which began every February 13th.
Josh Hutchinson: This was a time for families to honor their deceased ancestors. 
Josh Hutchinson: On the final night of Parentalia, February 21st, Romans observed Feralia, when they would leave offerings to appease the dead and prevent their spirits from coming back to haunt the living.
Josh Hutchinson: Another Roman feast appeasing the spirits of the dead was Lemuria, which was held every May. 
Sarah Jack: According to Ovid, Lemuria goes back to the earliest days of Rome, 
Sarah Jack: when Romulus observed Remuria to appease the spirit of his brother, Remus, who had been murdered. 
Josh Hutchinson: On Lemuria, it was believed that lemures and larvae, two forms of malevolent spirits, visited the homes of the living.
Sarah Jack: I do not want to meet a malevolent malevolent lemur. That sounds scary. 
Josh Hutchinson: Or malevolent larva spirit. [00:07:00] 
Sarah Jack: Romans lured these spirits out of their homes with incantations and offerings of black beans. 
Josh Hutchinson: You know, that always gets me to go. The offering of black beans. Just leave a trail and I'll follow it anywhere. Lemuria is cited by some as a precursor to All Souls' Day, when many Christians remember the dead and pray for their souls.
Sarah Jack: Lemuria is also believed to have been observed by some Christians from the 4th century as a day when Christian martyrs were remembered. 
Josh Hutchinson: The holiday was later used by Pope Boniface IV to reconsecrate the Pantheon of Rome to the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs. The feast celebrating this Dedicatio Sanctae Mariae Ad Martyres was observed May 13th.
Sarah Jack: How the feast was moved to November 1st is a matter of debate. Some say the Celts observed All Saints' Day on November 1st, because it coincided with Samhain, the Celtic New [00:08:00] Year, which we'll cover shortly. Others believe the Germans changed the date.
Josh Hutchinson: Whoever it was that first began observing the feast on November 1st, that new date was fixed in place in 835 by Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Pious, with the ascent of Pope Gregory IV and the Roman Catholic bishops. 
Sarah Jack: When All Souls' Day was added to the church calendar on November 2nd in the 10th century, a three day Allhallowtide festival was created, incorporating All Hallows' Eve, All Hallows' or All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.
Josh Hutchinson: These were days for Christians to pray for the dead, and they remain so in some branches of the Christian faith today. 
Sarah Jack: An annual vigil mass is held on All Hallows' Eve. 
Josh Hutchinson: Then on All Hallows' Day, participants honor departed saints and martyrs, especially those who have not been canonized and do not have their own feast days.
Sarah Jack: On All Souls' Day, the faithful pray for the souls of all departed Christians, especially their family and friends who may be in [00:09:00] purgatory. 
Josh Hutchinson: These days, many Christians combine All Saints' and All Souls' Days. 
Sarah Jack: However, from 1430 to 1955, the Roman Catholic Church observeda full eight days of Allhallowtide.
Josh Hutchinson: Scott Culpepper had the following to say about All Hallows'. 
Scott Culpepper: It's very interesting. You've got these different observances that mark not only the transition of the seasons, but also there arises this belief that that period is a very liminal time, because you've got that transition from greater light to greater darkness. And part of that liminality is the idea that the barrier between the living and the dead becomes more permeable.
Scott Culpepper: There were Roman festivals that were practiced around May 13th that sort of venerated the dead, those who had gone before, and even posited the idea that the dead might be in contact that night. Samhain seems to have had an element of that as well, where the power of the ancestors is invoked to try to help [00:10:00] increase yields in the future, to preserve the people over the course of the long winter months.
Scott Culpepper: So when you move into the early medieval history of the church, a lot of officials are wanting to reach out in a variety of ways to pagan peoples, people who practice the old religions, and bring them into the Christian fold. And one way they do that is by trying to adopt and then co-opt, transform practices that are very popular amongst them.
Scott Culpepper: And one of the things they'll do is to move that festival that in Roman culture happens around May 13th or May 16th to the end of October. And during that point of transition from the greater light to the greater darkness, they will set aside the observance on November the 1st of what's called All Hallows' and the idea behind that initially was to celebrate the saints, because during the early medieval period, the concept of sainthood is beginning to [00:11:00] rise in prominence in the medieval church. And so first and foremost, they set it as a day to celebrate the saints and the way the saints, through their great actions, have set aside treasury and merit for people. That whole sacramental system is developing within the Catholic church. 
Scott Culpepper: People are also having a need to acknowledge their own ancestors, as well, not just the sort of super sanctified Christians represented by the Saints, but people that are dear to them, as well. And so they'll also eventually create another day, November 2nd, which is All Souls' Day. All Hallows Day is set aside to commemorate the Saints. November 2nd is set aside to commemorate others who have gone before. So October 31st becomes known as All Hallows' Eve, the day before All Hallows Day. And eventually it gets transformed from All Hallows' Eve or Even to Halloween, the compound word, it gets all incorporated together. 
Sarah Jack: [00:12:00] Sean and Carrie McCabe added this. 
Sean and Carrie: There is that, probably in our perspective today of they're connecting with the dead and their ancestors, that's spooky, but they wouldn't have seen it that way. It's very much like something like Dia de los Muertos, where it's more of a reverence. Part of the spookiness, I would have to say, came from the Christians assimilating pagan traditions to try and, you know, like, well, they're already celebrating this, so we can figure it into our feast calendar and try to get them to join Christianity but not have to give up all of their traditions, and so they really went deep into the idea of a time of the dead, because they couldn't really call it the same way that it was, which was like a harvest festival paying tribute to the harvest, which was like a godlike figure.
Sean and Carrie: You can't do that in [00:13:00] Christianity, so they changed it to All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. That was the time of what would be called Hallowmas, November 1st and 2nd. And so the Saints' Day would be to mark the saints, especially in Catholicism, obviously, and then All Souls' Day would be for the spirits of those who had passed already. The idea of the dead got involved in the tributes. There would be a lot of prayers. People started baking soul cakes to you couldn't make sacrifices anymore to the dead, because that was pagan. So you could bake these cakes and make them as offerings, which became our treats that you would give out on Halloween.
Josh Hutchinson: The eight day observance of All Hallowtide was removed from the liturgical calendar during a series of reforms instituted by Pope Pius XII. 
Sarah Jack: Through the millennia, the end of October hasn't only been a time to remember the departed, it has also been a time to celebrate harvests and prepare for winter.
Josh Hutchinson: In parts of Britain, [00:14:00] ancient harvest festivals continued to be observed well into the Christian era. 
Sarah Jack: Over time, Halloween emerged as a syncretized holiday, fusing the Christian season of Hallowtide with these earlier pagan festivals, principally Celtic, with some Roman contributions, as we have mentioned. 
Josh Hutchinson: The Celtic festival most commonly associated with Halloween is Samhain, which Sarah mentioned was the Celtic New Year festival.
Sarah Jack: Scholars know precious little about what actually went down on Samhain in ancient times. 
Josh Hutchinson: It was believed that as the Northern Hemisphere transitioned into the darkest months of the year, the mythical veil between the worlds thinned, allowing spirits to interact with the physical world. 
Sarah Jack: To ward off spirits, Celts built great bonfires and called upon the gods, gratifying them with sacrifices of animals and possibly humans.
Josh Hutchinson: While it is known that Northern Europeans did perform human sacrifices, it is not known whether these took place on Samhain or at [00:15:00] other times. 
Sarah Jack: It is likely that the participants sacrificed animals as they culled their herds for the harsh winter months. 
Josh Hutchinson: No hard evidence exists to prove that Celts used Samhain to honor the dead or to worship their ancestors.
Sarah Jack: We did learn from Mary Craig that the Celts went guising, wearing masks to hide from spirits. 
Mary W Craig: We still go out at Halloween, we go out guising, you guys go out trick-or-treating, and that's going way back. That's pre-Christian, that's a pre-Christian festival that we all still know. I mean, it's fun, and the kids get sweeties and candy.
Josh Hutchinson: And Scott Culpepper told us more about Samhain. 
Scott Culpepper: It's an ancient Celtic festival that was practiced around the time of the end of October, about the time that we now celebrate Halloween, and it marked the transition from the days of light to the time of darkness. It seems like in a variety of different ancient religious systems there was an attachment of the religious system to the cycles of agriculture, as you would expect, because most people's lives depended very much on that [00:16:00] cycle operating successfully and that ties you to the mystical forces that foster the earth, that whatever deities you believe in, they're expressed through those natural cycles and through natural phenomena. 
Scott Culpepper: And so the idea was you're getting to the end of the cycle of growth. You're entering the time of harvest when things need to be as perfect as possible for you to have a good crop to last through the winter. And you're entering the time of darkness. Days are going to get shorter. The nights are going to get longer until, of course, finally, you get to the winter solstice, when you have the very longest night of the year. And so it's seen as a time of death and a time of pending rebirth, so to speak, as you're entering into the winter months.
Scott Culpepper: And so from what we know, Samhain is a celebration of that, an expectation of what's to come and an honoring of what happened in the past. It seems like they were probably ceremonial rituals with bonfires, maybe people bringing some of the [00:17:00] produce that had been harvested in those fall months, and just crying out to the gods for a good winter and fruitful times to come in the future.
Scott Culpepper: And so it's very much marking that point of transition. It's one of several observances throughout the year that marks the point of transition. Having said that, that's what we know, but there's so much we don't know about exactly what happened. 
Scott Culpepper: And one of our struggles to understand a lot of the ancient Celtic religions of the British Isles is the fact that most of the information we get about them is mediated through other people, particularly the Romans. And the Romans had all kinds of reasons to exaggerate and to misrepresent what was being practiced. People like Julius Caesar, Tacitus, many other Roman historians, they'll write about the people of the British Isles and they'll record the actions of the Druids, who were said to be the priestly class among the Celtic peoples of the British [00:18:00] Isles, and they'll talk about human sacrifice. They'll talk about the resistance of Celtic peoples to the Romans. And so you get these very enticing images of Celtic peoples worshiping out in the groves with the sacred trees and all of that, a lot of which probably is based on accurate information to some degree, but then you get a lot of things about ritual sacrifice and all that as well that we're not nearly as sure about.
Scott Culpepper: We do appear to have some archaeological evidence of people dying violently in some parts of the British Isles, and so the scholarly community is very divided about the degree to which there might have been human sacrifice, and if there was, in what way or what context it operated. Most scholars that I've seen would argue that where there were sacrifices or offerings, they typically were animals or they were the produce of the earth, the things that had been gathered during the harvest, more so than human [00:19:00] sacrifice. But there is still an ongoing debate about there being pockets where human sacrifice was practiced. 
Scott Culpepper: Now, of course, for the Romans, this is the kind of thing that they certainly wanted to magnify and amplify. They're overcoming these, what they would view as twisted cultures, uncivilized cultures. And then with the transition of the Roman Empire to being a Christian empire, you get a lot of Christian leaders who are willing to sign on to those legends, as well, because again, they're Christianizing these people who are uncivilized, who are practicing violence against others. And so it's something that got a lot of legs. 
Scott Culpepper: We really don't know all of the specifics, but at least those are some of the things that we know about the traditions of Samhain. 
Sarah Jack: Sean and Carrie McCabe added. 
Sean and Carrie: So yeah, there's no real start date as these things go. They just appear in time. And the thing that we can really trace back the most to [00:20:00] today's Halloween in the past is to the Celts, the Druids. These are people that lived in early Ireland, Wales, England, Scotland, that whole area. And they had a really nature-based lifestyle. They were a nature-based religion. It was a pagan religion based on nature. And they were farmers and they lived on the land, so they were very connected to the earth. 
Sean and Carrie: And the original Halloween was one of their pagan traditions to celebrate, Samhain, is what it was called and still called by pagan practitioners today, and that's really to mark the onset of winter and basically when the harvest was done. Back in the day, we've always had dramatic climate changes and weather changes, and at this point in time, at that place in the world, you really had two halves of the [00:21:00] year. You had the summer half. And the winter half. It was really much more like six months, six months, and this was to celebrate the onset of the winter half of the year, where you would bring in the harvest and hibernate and not be harvesting and farming as much. So it was really their New Year celebration and a lot of those things that we associate with this time of year, those harvests and cornucopias and all that fun stuff, really comes from that this was a harvest, like a pagan harvest celebration to mark the end of that time of year.
 
Josh Hutchinson: Because of the non-Christian origins of elements of Halloween festivities, there are people who believe that Halloween itself is evil, and that different aspects of it are evil, sinister, and opening doors to Satan.
Sarah Jack: Some Samhain elements like costumes and Jack O'lanterns [00:22:00] are indeed part of Halloween today. However, we just don't think of their original purposes. 
Josh Hutchinson: And the pre-Christian Celts did not even have a Satan,so these things don't have satanic origins, though you could look at them as sinister and dark if you believe that human sacrifices were performed at them, like the wicker man sacrifices that some of the Romans wrote about.
Sarah Jack: The Romans who actually wrote about that stuff were recording second and third-hand information and might have really exaggerated things. So we don't know at Samhain if people were being killed or not. 
Josh Hutchinson: And while some very old Irish manuscripts reference the practice of killing children, these were written hundreds of years after the Christianization of the British Isles.
Sarah Jack: Whether that was an actual Samhain practice is impossible to know at this point. 
Josh Hutchinson: As we've seen, Halloween was thus the offspring of Allhallowtide and Samhain. 
Sarah Jack: With some other elements mixed in, depending on the time and place of observation. 
Josh Hutchinson: As the child of [00:23:00] Samhain and Allhallowtide, Halloween blended characteristics of both, and thus became a fusion of the sacred and the profane.
Josh Hutchinson: And that was your cat.
Sarah Jack: By profane, we don't necessarily mean obscene. We just mean that whether you're a Celtic pagan or a Christian, Halloween blends what is sacred to you with what is outside the sacred. 
Josh Hutchinson: Halloween became very popular in Ireland and Scotland, while after 1605, an event called Guy Fawkes Night gained more traction in England. 
Sarah Jack: Guy Fawkes? We went by his house when we were in England! 
Josh Hutchinson: In York! And we learned a little bit about the Gunpowder Plot. 
Sarah Jack: That's right, Guy Fawkes was one of a group of English Catholic conspirators who plotted to kill King James VI and I.
Josh Hutchinson: They were going to blow up the Parliament while the King was there for the start of its session. 
Sarah Jack: The State Opening of Parliament was scheduled for November 5th, and that's when the proverbial fireworks, in this case 36 barrels of gunpowder, were intended to [00:24:00] go off. 
Josh Hutchinson: But somebody tipped off the government, and during a search of the House of Lords on the night of November 4th, guards found Guy Fawkes guarding the barrels.
Sarah Jack: It was estimated that the amount of gunpowder was enough to destroy the House of Lords, where the king was due to address Parliament the next day, in a tradition which continues to the present day. 
Josh Hutchinson: Unfortunately for Guy Fawkes's cause, the discovery of the plot led to backlash against Catholics, increasing the oppression that the conspirators thought they were fighting against. 
Sarah Jack: The parliament found the defeat of this conspiracy to be so worth celebrating that in January 1606 it passed an act mandating annual observances in the Church of England.
Josh Hutchinson: And required all people to go to church for this new annual service. 
Sarah Jack: The law stayed on the books until 1859. 
Josh Hutchinson: In addition to the mandatory Gunpowder Treason Day church service, individuals and communities celebrated Guy Fawkes night with bells, [00:25:00] bonfires, and fireworks. 
Sarah Jack: Guy Fawkes and sometimes other reviled individuals were frequently burned in effigy during these events.
Josh Hutchinson: Early English settlers of the North American colonies brought Guy Fawkes Night over with them. 
Sarah Jack: And Irish and Scottish immigrants brought Halloween superstitions to the United States and Canada. 
Josh Hutchinson: Scott Culpepper told us. 
Scott Culpepper: It comes pretty early in the sense, and I, to kind of preface that, it would be important to talk about where it stood in the British Isles, especially, but in other parts of Europe too, about the time that the American colonies began to come together. The Reformation had really affected people's concept in the British Isles of Halloween and how its origins played into current politics and culture. You'd had the reform movements, the Protestant Reformation. You'd had the answering Catholic reform movements within the Catholic Church. In the British Isles, especially, Halloween is suspect because of its [00:26:00] Catholic associations, which is interesting. Now it's suspect because of its supposed, supernatural or demonic associations. At the time, it was suspect because they rightly saw it as a very Catholic sort of observance. 
Scott Culpepper: And of course, Protestants reject the idea of purgatory, and so the entire premise of this in many ways, and also they reject Saints. So the whole premise of this cycle of days is a problem for them. And so they very actively campaigned against it. Protestantism as it comes to the fore in England is somewhat puzzled about how to deal with it. Under Henry VIII, they really didn't do much about it because he was a very pragmatic sort of reformer. With Edward, his son, he tries to ban observances of Halloween, and then of course with his sister Mary, they go the other way, Mary tries to revive it because of her Catholicism.
Scott Culpepper: Finally, under Elizabeth, Protestantism gains control of the conversation, and Halloween is less often commemorated. But then [00:27:00] at the very beginning of the 17th century, in 1605, you get the infamous Gunpowder Plot, where Guy Fawkes tries to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and immediately after that, the year after Guy Fawkes is executed for that crime, you get the birth of Guy Fawkes Day.
Scott Culpepper: And so during the 17th century, a lot of the things we associate with Halloween, they're being practiced as part of Guy Fawkes Day observances, and it's an interesting patchwork quilt where you see Guy Fawkes being magnified. The Guy Fawkes Day Celebration in some parts of the British Isles. And in those pockets where Catholicism is stronger, you see still Halloween, or at least those sort of pre-Halloween observances still practiced.
Scott Culpepper: And it's interesting because a lot of the customs are the same for both. They'll have their cake and eat it too, so to speak. For instance, one thing that's practiced in the Catholic tradition at the time of Halloween is that poor people would go to the homes of people who are a little bit more affluent, [00:28:00] and they would ask for offerings to pray for the souls of those who had gone before, those who are in purgatory. So if you're a poor person, you go to a family and say, if you give me something, I will give prayers throughout the rest of the year for your family members who have gone on. Of course, Protestants are not open to that theology, but it becomes a way still of gathering alms. And so here. you see the incipient origins of the idea of trick-or-treat the idea of people coming for candy.
Scott Culpepper: So I go into all that as background, just to say that it was in a very interesting place in the British Isles. And so when colonists first came to America, they brought that with them. If you had more Protestant immigrants, they're going to tend to commemorate Guy Fawkes Day more in that Protestant tradition.
Scott Culpepper: If you're a Scotch-Irish immigrant, you're from the Highlands or whatever, and you're more Catholic in your orientation, you'll probably practice some of those older [00:29:00] versions of Halloween folklore, Halloween observances. But it's interesting because some of the customs were the same all around.
Scott Culpepper: Looks like it really begins to get a lot of attention from people like Longfellow and Hawthorne in the 19th century. Robert Burns had been writing about it in his Scottish poetry in the late 18th century. it's being practiced, it's part of the custom, probably about the mid to late 19th century is when it really starts to get traction in American culture.
Scott Culpepper: I've heard some people refer to the Civil War and say that the large number of dead, coming out of the Civil War may have given an impetus to this obsession with the dead, with commemorating the dead, with the idea of the veil between this world and the next, as that's also the time when spiritualism is really popular in American culture, probably in part because of all the deaths that were suffered during the civil war and people's desire to get in touch with their loved [00:30:00] ones.
Scott Culpepper: So that seems to be the moment when it becomes more popular, although it's a very different sort of celebration then than it's ultimately going to become. 
Sarah Jack: In colonial days, Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night, where they were observed, were in competition with each other. 
Josh Hutchinson: The Puritans in New England did not care for either.
Sarah Jack: But evidence of punishment for bonfire-lighting and other holiday activity is evidence that these festivals were observed by some colonists even in New England. 
Josh Hutchinson: After the American Revolution, Halloween beat out Guy Fawkes Night to become North America's number one night for bonfires and pranks.
Sarah Jack: Guy Fawkes Night, closely associated with the English monarchy, went out of style over time, though it lingered into the 19th century in parts of the former colonies. 
Josh Hutchinson: George Washington himself forbade his troops from celebrating Guy Fawkes Day, particularly from burning an effigy of the Pope, which he worried would offend the people of Canada, [00:31:00] whom he hoped would join the Patriot cause.
Sarah Jack: Sadly, there's no portrait of Washington in Halloween costume. 
Sarah Jack: And no record that he ever bobbed for apples with his wooden teeth or handed out gifts to trick-or-treaters. Halloween, from the early modern period well into the 20th century, was a night of vandalism and depending whose side you took, general mischief or depraved hooliganism. 
Josh Hutchinson: If you think toilet papering and egg throwing are destructive, you should have seen Halloween in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Sarah Jack: Scott Culpepper told us this about Halloween in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Scott Culpepper: There was this tradition of the Lords of Misrule in the early modern period, where people would also play pranks. It was a time a lot like some of the other festivals, too, like Carnival, where you had this inversion of the social structure, where people could pretend to be something else, and you would have people put on [00:32:00] masks and basically pretend to be something other than they were. They could dress like a lord or a lady. 
Scott Culpepper: And sometimes people would engage in pranks that were quite cruel. They would damage property. There were instances in the early modern period where people challenged each other to go and to mock a witch as a way of essentially trying to control malevolent powers in the area. So some poor woman is going to be beset by people accusing her of being a witch. And a lot of those sort of customs continue, probably carried by Irish and Scottish immigrants into the late 19th century.
Scott Culpepper: You get a lot of pranks during Halloween, and it begins to get out of hand, so much so that by the time of the Great Depression, there are people who are concerned that there's too much vandalism, too much rowdiness, the holiday has gotten very out of control, and so it's during the Great Depression that retailers and other [00:33:00] culture producers begin to work to transform the holiday. 
Scott Culpepper: They basically set out to tame the holiday, and one of the ways they're going to do that is by making it a more child-focused event. They'll take some of these customs, such as coming and asking for favors to be granted, trick-or-treat, and they'll start to encourage the idea of giving candy to those who come, people coming just to seek gifts for nothing in return, as a way to pacify those who might engage in more socially unacceptable behaviors, and this actually came from a custom where people would sometimes pay folks off that they thought were going to engage in rowdy behavior. In the 1910s, 1920s, some people who want to protect their property, they would pay folks off. And so this is a way of taming that, making it more culturally acceptable 
Sarah Jack: In [00:34:00] 1908, merrymakers in Belton, Texas made so merry that they practically burned the town down, destroying homes, freight cars, and cotton bales for a total ofup to $250,000 in damages. 
Josh Hutchinson: It was common for revelers, mostly young men, to tear up wooden sidewalks, fences, verandas, and anything else they could pry apart.
Sarah Jack: Halloween was a dangerous night to be in an outhouse as groups of young men enjoyed tipping them over. 
Josh Hutchinson: Definitely unpleasant to be on the other side of that transaction. And pranksters would unhinge gates and doors and place them in intersections or use them in their bonfires.
Sarah Jack: Intersections were popular places to find automobiles, freight cars, wagons, and anything else movable the morning after Halloween. 
Josh Hutchinson: Sounds a lot like the senior prank week in American high schools. 
Sarah Jack: But, like, to the max. Some of it was these pranks, but other parts of it were dangerous. There were people putting things on [00:35:00] railroad tracks or actually tearing tracks up and that kind of thing on Halloween to cause real accidents to happen.
Josh Hutchinson: There were some close calls with trains and trolley cars because of obstructions and damage to the tracks. I read about one trolley driver who got a fright from a dummy being placed in the tracks and threw on the brakes as fast as he could. And I've read about others where if a trolley ran uphill, the people would grease the tracks.
Sarah Jack: And stealing, theft, and even strong arm robbery have been part of Halloween since this mischief making element came into play. 
Josh Hutchinson: Basically, gangs of teenage boys and young men used to hold shopkeepers hostage, essentially.They'd say, we've got you outnumbered here, give us what we want, and then we'll go away.
Sarah Jack: I hope they did go away. 
Josh Hutchinson: I hope so. 
Sarah Jack: And girls were expected to have little parties at home, tea party kinds of things.They would play games where they would look in the mirror or other divination [00:36:00] games, possibly the Venus glass, to figure out who their husband was going to be.
Josh Hutchinson: They do some things like burn nuts and see which way that they popped in the fire to know if a relationship was going to last.The thing that people would say was, you're going to be in home where you're safe and everything because you're women. We can't have you out roaming the streets at night.
Sarah Jack: But for the boys, they need to go get it all out on Halloween. 
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, it's like the Purge. They just need to get it all out of their system. All the mischief that they could be doing throughout the year, we're just going to get them to do it all on one night. 
Sarah Jack: At this time, there was not formal police. You had a handful of men walking the town, making sure it wasn't under attack from the outside, but you didn't have the professional police forces, like criminal justice, or anything like that. 
Sarah Jack: So often when things would get out of hand on Halloween, they'd call in volunteers or a [00:37:00] posse to deal with the rabble-rousing. There were constables, but that was an elected position that basically landholding men took turns doing. So it was like being the neighborhood dog catcher or fence viewer, being a constable. 
Sarah Jack: You certainly didn't go to a police academy or anything. You didn't learn criminal procedure. You didn't learn how to investigate. You didn't learn how to do things by the book. There was no book. There was nobody that that was their career. 
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. It was just a temporary job for them for a year at a time, usually. But by the 1920s, however, police forces were professionalized. And many citizens had had enough of the midnight madness on Halloween. 
Sarah Jack: Community minded organizations began sponsoring trunk or treats, oh wait, that's not in the 1920s. Sponsoring Halloween celebrations to [00:38:00] distract the youth from destroying their areas. 
Josh Hutchinson: And enough people were complaining to the police that cities finally had to listen up and provide better security. 
Sarah Jack: Gradually, Halloweenwas subdued and commercialized. 
Josh Hutchinson: But the wild revelry did not go down without a fight. 
Sarah Jack: Indeed, Halloween vandalismand arson has continued though to a lesser degree, hopefully. 
Sarah Jack: Now let's talk about a holiday that's something like a distant cousin of Halloween, the Day of the Dead. 
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, you can look at both Halloween and El Día de los Muertos in similar ways. They're both the result of multiple threads of traditions meeting up with each other. 
Sarah Jack: Day of the Dead combines some ancient Mexican traditions that were there prior to contact with the Spanish with All Saints' Day, All Souls' Day and All Hallows' Eve. 
Josh Hutchinson: These Catholic holidays and the ancient festivals that came together with them formed the holiday that there is today. 
Sarah Jack: And Halloween's the same situation because it's also from Allhallowtide, those same three holy days in [00:39:00] reverence to the dead, and Samhain, the Celtic festival. 
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, those two things come together in both Halloween and the Day of the Dead. They're both fusions of Allhallowtide with older traditions native to the lands where they were developed. 
Sarah Jack: And Scott Culpepper said the following about the Day of the Dead.
Scott Culpepper: So many of the areas that commemorate the Day of the Dead, especially in Latin America, Spain, Italy. These are places that are very heavily Catholic influenced, and it's an interesting sort of joining of popular folklore and Catholic tradition.
Scott Culpepper: So definitely, I would say they stem from many of the same roots, and I think you see that, especially in the fact that some of the rites of Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, and Carnivale, in parts of Latin America, they're similar to things that are done on the Day of the Dead. They have a similar purpose, commemorating those who have gone before, especially in cultures that believe in purgatory, praying for those you love to advance through purgatory well.
Scott Culpepper: So yes, definitely there are affinities there, and it's [00:40:00] just a great recipe. It's a great mix. As we were talking about earlier, Sarah said the importance of acknowledging mythology and the richness of it. We try to draw these hard barriers, these hard lines, especially in a lot of contemporary cultures, and the reality is it's all a big soup flowing together. It's the Christian traditions, it's the pagan traditions. Once all of that arrives in North and South America, it's the traditions of the Native peoples there, as well. 
Josh Hutchinson: Another type of holiday people don't always associate with Halloween is the harvest festival, such as Thanksgiving. Indeed, many harvest festivals and fairs still happen around Halloween today. 
Sarah Jack: The kind of concurrent development of Thanksgiving, as well as Halloween, differentiated the two over time. Halloween before was really a very harvest centered occasion. 
Josh Hutchinson: And then Americans decided that, well, Thanksgiving's going to be our major harvest festival in the United States.
Sarah Jack: So Halloween still has some harvest themes like candy corn, corn [00:41:00] mazes, bobbing for apples, pumpkins on display. 
Josh Hutchinson: And the reason it's like a feast originated with Samhain and with other harvest festivals. There would be a harvest feast, because you had to cull your herds and prepare your food for the winter. So there would be a plentiful supply of meat and crops at Halloween time. 
Sarah Jack: You could have just the amount of animals that you could get through the winter, your strongest animals. Then you'd cull the rest of them, and then you'd end up having that meat for the winter. But you'd also celebrate right therethat night on a feast.
Josh Hutchinson: And then that paired up with the All Souls' Day tradition of making soul cakes as kind of an offering for the departed and became the tradition of paying people to do prayers for you, paying them with soul cakes and other treats. 
Sarah Jack: Did you say witch cakes? No, I'm just kidding. 
Josh Hutchinson: That's probably the biggest. Don't pay with which cakes, soul cakes, , 
Sarah Jack: Over time, Halloween went from a meat-oriented holiday to a dessert-oriented holiday and then to a candy-oriented [00:42:00] holiday as trick-or-treating really took off, because people originally were trick-or-treating for nuts and fruit and bread, whole foods, not just candies.
Josh Hutchinson: They were looking to get meals. And for people facing food insecurity, it was a really important day for them for their own winter preparations to get some food from some other people. 
Sarah Jack: But once it became trick-or-treating, and especially with the different scares over supposed razor blades in apples, and people allegedly drugging foods, it became just pre-packaged candies that is now, easy to hand out and easy to just carry around in a big bag.
Josh Hutchinson: Personally, I think we should get back to helping people prepare for winter at Halloween time. 
Sarah Jack: I think that's a great idea. People could give to food banks and clothing donation centers. 
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, we could do something good with Halloween.Make a collection drive a community event.
Sarah Jack: It's not too late to donate to your local food bank or to share last year's coat with someone in need now. 
Josh Hutchinson: So, now let's [00:43:00] talk pop culture and how pop culture and Halloween influence each other. 
Sarah Jack: It's two way communication. People dress up as their favorite characters from movies and TV, but at the same time, the movies and TV reflect what's going on in culture.
Josh Hutchinson: So you get movies and TV about Halloween, and then those become themselves Halloween traditions, so then they're feeding the holiday. 
Sarah Jack: It just keeps evolving in those ways, the way that culture presents it. People take that on. 
Josh Hutchinson: I've just read Halloween: from Pagan Ritual to Party Night by Nicholas Rogers. And one interesting point that he makes is in the horror genre, originally the monsters used to be literal monsters and not anything like humans.
Sarah Jack: You had people like Frankenstein's monster, King Kong, Godzilla, mummies, and vampires were kind of human, but not. A wolfman would be kind of human, but not. 
Josh Hutchinson: Definitely not. Different enough. They're mostly these unreal [00:44:00] monsters. It wasn't human murderers, which is what horror morphed into later as fears of serial killers grew in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. That's when you got all these slashers coming out that featured depraved serial killers and mass murderers. 
Sarah Jack: Like Michael Myers from Halloween, basically, a Superman, almost immortal, very hard to destroy, and so are Jason and Freddy Krueger. Freddy's a dream guy. He's really hard to get rid of. 
Josh Hutchinson: Another thing was, as these horror films went on also, originally the people who got rid of the monster were professionals, police officers and military. They were always men. 
Sarah Jack: But then you got into the final girl situations where it was a young woman or a girl that would actually ultimately defeat the villain. 
Josh Hutchinson: But the final girl would only defeat them temporarily. And then the villain would come back in the next movie and do it all over again and get back to another final girl and she'd defeat him [00:45:00] temporarily. 
Sarah Jack: And then he would come back in the next movie again.
Josh Hutchinson: And so on through 10 or 12 or 50 movies. The author, Nicholas Rogers, also pointed out some more interesting things about horror and what happened over time. For instance, in Psycho in 1960, during the shower scene, they only showed one stab. It wasn't one of these movies that we have nowadays where it's stab, stab, stab with blood spurting everywhere and body parts coming off, that kind of thing that by the end of the decade, you were starting to get in horror movies. 
Sarah Jack: More maiming and dismemberment and blood and guts, gore. You started to get gore where before it was more suspense and the threat really drove the movie. And then it became sex and gore.
Sarah Jack: Yeah. And sex was always a part of Halloween on some level, because there were courtship rituals and the whole, who's going to be my spouse thing. And there were, at least in wealthier [00:46:00] circles, dances where you did have young men and young women coming together at Halloween to try and promote courtship. And as a night with relaxed inhibitions, it became more of a sexy night. And now when you look at the costumes, there's a lot of sexy. 
Josh Hutchinson: Right? You go to Spirit Halloween and just walk down the aisles and the number of costumes that are called sexy this or that is staggering. You could be a sexy crocodile or a sexy mummy or a sexy anything, a sexy vegetable, if you want. 
Sarah Jack: And there are Halloween sex symbols like Elvira, the queen of Halloween. 
Josh Hutchinson: Elvira, definitely a big sex symbol, and even the vampire thing that you got going back to the Gothic era of writing really was very sexual, along with the threat of violence and the actual violence, there was that sexual tension between the vampire and the victim.
Josh Hutchinson: And then a trend that you see in the [00:47:00] development of Halloween is that people are always trying to push the envelope. Whatever the envelope happens to be at that time, Halloween is a day for pushing the boundaries, especially sexual boundaries. 
Josh Hutchinson: Now, let's turn our attention to some of the specific Halloween traditions that survive today. 
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, I want to start with the colors. Orange and black have been associated with Halloween longer than I've been alive, and that's saying a lot these days. 
Sarah Jack: Purple and green is starting to nudge black and orange over. 
Josh Hutchinson: And then there's Jack O'Lanterns, they're still everywhere, and they date back potentially thousands of years, at Samhain they were used to ward off spirits.
Sarah Jack: Back then, they were lanterns made of turnips, and they may have been used to turn spirits away from homes and fields. 
Josh Hutchinson: Another way of dealing with malicious spirits was simply to hide from them, and that's why people began masking themselves on Samhain. 
Sarah Jack: So there are definitely [00:48:00] pieces of Samhain that still live on today. We just lost our connection with the reasons for why we're doing these things. We're just doing them out of tradition and just for fun, whereas before, they used to have real profound meaning.
Josh Hutchinson: It could have been seen as a matter of life or death to observe the proper rituals and avoid the spirits. 
Sarah Jack: Today that masking you mentioned, known as guising, has become trick-or-treat. 
Josh Hutchinson: It has. As Halloween matured, parents wanted to give their children an opportunity to participate in the festivities, and going around in costumes seemed a fun way to let them use their little imaginations.
Sarah Jack: And who doesn't like being rewarded with sweet treats? 
Josh Hutchinson: I know, I sure do. Trick-or-treating today is a ubiquitous feature of Halloween, but there have been a number of scares which have curtailed, at least for a time, that activity. 
Sarah Jack: It started with rumors of razor blades in apples. 
Josh Hutchinson: And then spread to involve drugged candy.
Sarah Jack: These days, [00:49:00] people worry that fentanyl is being added to candy. 
Josh Hutchinson: And yet, there have been only a handful of confirmed Halloween incidents related to trick-or-treating.
Sarah Jack: Other than some of the strong arm robbery that goes on between little kids and bullies, or the parents who get in the candy bowl after the kids are in bed. 
Josh Hutchinson: Oh, yes. And theft from your own children's. But that's a time honored Halloween tradition. You can't take that away from us.
Sarah Jack: It's profound. 
Josh Hutchinson: There is that with the bullies stealing from the younger children, but on a more serious note, only a couple of Halloween fatalities have been linked to candy-tampering and those both involve people in the victim's families, not strangers. 
Sarah Jack: Though stranger danger continues to be a common fear, which is why parents tend to accompany their children or follow in their cars.
Josh Hutchinson: And a big reason behind the surge in trunk-or-treating today. 
Sarah Jack: Personally, I hope trick-or-treating never [00:50:00] dies. I love to be visited by all the costumes. 
Josh Hutchinson: And I hope it continues to, I just remember it so fondly from childhood. I want it for all the children. 
Sarah Jack: I love hearing the laughter. So there's groups that trick-or-treat together, sometimes it's neighbors.
Sarah Jack: There's laughter in between the houses. It's so great. 
Josh Hutchinson: Just sitting on your porch and seeing all your neighbors and the little, the kids and families coming out. It's one of those few days where you actually might talk to a neighbor.
Sarah Jack: Sadly, it's, that's true. So we've covered the candy connection. Now, what about all those frightening costumes and decorations people love so much? 
Josh Hutchinson: Well, ghouls, ghosts, and goblins have been associated with Halloween since its inception, as there was that belief in the thin veil between the visible world and the usually invisible world.
Sarah Jack: And skeletons and skulls, of course, are associated with the dead [00:51:00] who are honored on Allhallowtide or may come back to visit the living. 
Josh Hutchinson: Anything that goes bump in the night can be useful on Halloween to give a little fright. 
Sarah Jack: That sounds like an awesome rhyme from one of those 50s Halloween planner books.
Sarah Jack: That's great. But some of those things that go bump are newer creations from the pop culture we spoke of earlier. 
Josh Hutchinson: Some of those things, like bats and black cats, didn't appear at Halloween until the 19th century when Gothic authors wrote about vampires turning into bats and black cats turning their humans into murderers.
Josh Hutchinson: And Black cats have really been maligned as this possible source of bad luck. Every black cat that I've ever met has been pleasant and brought good things. So be nice to black cats today and every day. 
Sarah Jack: And I'd like to thank Wesley, the Dread Pirate Roberts, for enriching this episode.
Josh Hutchinson: a fusion of the [00:52:00] sacred
Josh Hutchinson: Do not be mean to the black cats. 
Sarah Jack: And of course, those more recent creations in books, comics, radio, theater, television, and film have graced Halloween festivities as they've come out. 
Josh Hutchinson: And of course, witches are an important part of modern Halloween and have been part of Halloween for quite some time. 
Sarah Jack: Before we discuss that, I'd like to say again that there are different types of witches with very different characteristics and behaviors. 
Josh Hutchinson: I agree. You have the notion of the evil witch who gets powers from Satan or other malevolent entities, depending on which culture and religion the witch is in the conception of. These are the mythical witches who are the targets of witch hunts. They do not really exist. 
Sarah Jack: Our show is usually about hunts for these types of witches who are still believed to be real by a large portion of the world's population.[00:53:00] 
Josh Hutchinson: To learn more about these, we'll turn to what Marion Gibson told us about magic. 
Marion Gibson: Magic is a force which cannot be explained by other factors such as science, rationality, observable, physical, or material changes of that kind. But it's more than that, really. It's what people choose to define as magic. So in some cases, some of the phenomena that people have thought were magical in the past or think to be magical today can actually be explained in other ways. But people choose not to because they want to see those things as being magical. And of course, magic can be a positive or a negative thing. So if you accuse your neighbor of being a witch and doing magic, obviously that's a terribly negative thing. But you might also see magic as a positive thing. And one of the ways the witch turns up in contemporary culture is a kind of positive magician, somebody who's sparkly and glamorous and exciting and maybe even a role model. [00:54:00] Magic accompanies the idea of the witch throughout history, really. 
Sarah Jack: And Marion said this about the witch. 
Marion Gibson: The witch is a very movable thing, but often defined as an enemy. So one of the places that the witch fits into society, even over such a long historical period, is that they are a very useful enemy. And if they, if you don't think they exist already, you need to invent them because they fill that gap in society where scapegoats and those who challenge authority, people who are subversive, people who are seen to be problematic, certain racial, religious, cultural others. Those people fit. So The witch is is useful when you want to say, I do believe the world is full of magic. It's full of spirits. It's a highly religious world. And I think that because God has his good people on one side, therefore, Satan must have his bad people on the other side. And those people [00:55:00] must be witches and they must be able to do real magic.
Marion Gibson: So the witch is useful more than anything else, useful throughout history.
Josh Hutchinson: And Malcolm Gaskill had this to say about the imaginary evil witch. 
Malcolm Gaskill: Just that question, what is a witch? It's such an incredibly multifaceted and mutable concept.
Malcolm Gaskill: So again, you have the biblical witch, and you have the legal witch. The witch is someone who forms a covenant with the devil. But how do you prove that? But in the community, the witch is somebody really who is trying to harm you, your household, your domestic interests, your livestock, your crops, and very particularly, and this is really important for the history of witchcraft, your children.
Malcolm Gaskill: Children are so often at the center of witchcraft accusations. That the fear of parents towards their children is that most intense emotional experience. The parent who thinks, as I think many parents would, I would die to protect my children. [00:56:00] If you take that intensity into a situation where people really do believe that someone is trying to use black magic, in effect, to murder their children, you get the most vicious kind of defensive response.
Malcolm Gaskill: And that vicious defensive response often translates into witchcraft accusations. Because witchcraft, the suspicion of witchcraft is often based upon the belief that someone else is jealous and envious and therefore can't have what you have and therefore will just destroy it, and spoil it. You know that anxiety is very common.
Malcolm Gaskill: For these people, the belief in witchcraft was a real thing and that witchcraft was a real power.
Sarah Jack: And Scott Culpepper told us this about witches. 
Scott Culpepper: I saw a special a while ago, I think it was produced by the History Channel, where they were talking about the legend of the witch, how it began to arise in the late medieval and early modern period. And they noted the fact that these are primarily [00:57:00] women who are being accused of witchcraft, and her tools are born of the domestic sphere. And talk about the ordinary household broom and the ordinary household cauldron that is used for cooking and how that becomes incorporated into the legends as the tools of the witch, because those are the tools that women would have used in culture. 
Josh Hutchinson: You also have very real practicing witches who self identify by that term and have absolutely nothing to do with the evil witches of legend. 
Sarah Jack: These individuals are not Halloween witches. 
Josh Hutchinson: But of course you do have the pop culture witch, as well, a third type of witch and an ever-evolving creation of the collective imagination who's long been part of Halloween. 
Sarah Jack: Even with pop culture, the witch takes many forms, sometimes portrayed in a positive light and other times cast as harmful.
Josh Hutchinson: Sometimes the witch is a strong woman who experiences liberation through her powers. 
Sarah Jack: Other times the witch is a barely human creature, like the [00:58:00] hag from old stereotypes. 
Josh Hutchinson: In recent decades, many sympathetic accounts have come out about witches and wizards. 
Sarah Jack: But other portrayals rely on old images of evil witches.
Josh Hutchinson: In the past, it was believed that evil witches were more likely to be out and about doing things on Halloween because they could manipulate different forces, different occult forces, and summon spirits. 
Sarah Jack: The ones that don't exist. 
Josh Hutchinson: Evil witches that don't exist. 
Sarah Jack: What would a discussion of Halloween be without the coverage of The Witch City, Salem?
Josh Hutchinson: The Witch City, which is now basically the Halloween City as well, we'd indeed be remiss not to mention Haunted Happenings and the well over a million people who now visit Salem, Massachusetts each October. 
Sarah Jack: This festival was held first in 1982 on Halloween weekend and now features events throughout the month of October.
Josh Hutchinson: Last year, Rachel Christ-Doane of the Salem Witch Museum [00:59:00] told us that.
Rachel Christ-Doane: So I've been working here for about eight years now, and even in just that time, October has become steadily more and more difficult to manage in some ways as time has gone on. So for those who might be listening who don't know, October is by far the busiest time of year for Salem. The city sponsors an event called Haunted Happenings. It's a fall festival that goes on for the entire month of October. And it was actually envisioned as, it was created as a one weekend event in 1982. It was just supposed to be two days. And nobody could have foreseen how popular this festival would become.
Rachel Christ-Doane: There's all kinds of things happening throughout the city throughout that time. The different businesses do special events and things like that. There's tours, there's concerts. It's a really fun time to be here. But Salem is actually [01:00:00] quite a small city. We were never meant to be hosting a festival that's this popular.
Rachel Christ-Doane: So even in the past few years since the pandemic, last year, we had the busiest year on record. We had over a million people come in the month of October, which was just unbelievably crazy to a point where the city's infrastructure simply can't handle it. Restrooms were breaking all over the city, like the plumbing of Salem couldn't physically handle it. It's a testament to how much people love Halloween and the popularity of that particular fall holiday, which people now very strongly associate with Salem. So it's a blessing and a curse. 
Rachel Christ-Doane: It's really fun to work here in October to a degree. You get to meet people from all over the world who are in full-on Halloween costumes for the entire month of October, who are just so happy and excited to be here, so that's really fun. But at the same time it's also [01:01:00] very demanding, and people tend to get a little frustrated trying to get in and out of Salem and are maybe not so nice to the service workers while they're here. So this is a friendly reminder to always be nice to service workers wherever you go, because it's people just trying their best to make your visit fun.
Rachel Christ-Doane: So it's good, and it's stressful. And it's also what allows Salem to thrive as a community, because the revenue that's generated in October is what keeps the city going throughout the winter. So again, it's a blessing and a curse all in one. 
Sarah Jack: So right now would be a good time to plan next year's Salem trip. 
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. You definitely want to plan that at least a few months in advance, if not give it the whole year. 
Sarah Jack: Salem has a permanent population of 45,000 and expects 1.2 million people in the 31 days of October in 2024. 
Josh Hutchinson: That's an average of nearly 40,000 extra people every [01:02:00] single day, almost double the normal population.
Sarah Jack: So expect crowds and don't plan to drive in Salem, as very little parking is available. 
Josh Hutchinson: Just get there, check into your hotel, relax, enjoy the festivities at a leisurely place, and please stay off the tombstones in Charter Street Cemetery. They're not props. They're for real people who have real kin today.
Sarah Jack: Everywhere, not just in Salem, Halloween continues to evolve, and many details will, no doubt, change this century. 
Josh Hutchinson: But Halloween has survived hundreds of years, perhaps thousands if you count from the dawn of Samhain. 
Sarah Jack: And Halloween will, no doubt, continue to flourish beyond our lifetimes. 
Josh Hutchinson: The holiday has been spreading beyond North America, making a comeback in Britain, and taking off in other lands.
Sarah Jack: And in today's world, international cultural exchanges between Halloween, the Day [01:03:00] of the Dead, and other celebrations will continue to occur. 
Josh Hutchinson: So, who knows what Halloween will look like in another 20 years, or 50, or 100? 
Sarah Jack: Halloween has cemented its place in Canadian and American culture as a holiday when the usual rules are thrown out the window and mostly in pursuit of fun. 
Josh Hutchinson: As a night when celebrants can let their hair down, its appeal runs deep. 
Sarah Jack: And it provides a relatively safe environment for confronting society's deepest fears, allowing us to face death and our other anxieties. 
Josh Hutchinson: And then the next morning, we get to rush to the stores to buy up all the leftover candy at half price to help us get through the more anxiety inducing days of the calendar.
Sarah Jack: And now, Mary Bingham is back with Minute with Mary. 
Mary Bingham: Witches and goblins and ghosts, oh my. When I was a kid I loved everything spooky in the month [01:04:00] of October. I would rest on my bed and read about witches flying on their broomsticks through the air with the bats flying with them and guiding them across the night sky. I read ghost stories that happened in New England and even visited the scariest cemetery near where I live in the area of Hollis, New Hampshire.
Mary Bingham: Those scary stories were strangely magical to me. Heck, one year I dressed up as a witch. And the two hour makeup and costume session was ghoul enough to cause me to be unrecognizable to both family and friends. Picture it. I look like Alice Cooper with a tall black hat and a black dress. 
Mary Bingham: Today, I still love Halloween. I love the decorations both outside the homes and inside. And I'm reminded of my favorite season that soon follows. [01:05:00] Christmas. And as a descendant of three hanged in Salem, I know that Halloween has zero to do with the circumstances of those accused, convicted, and hanged. Thank you.
Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary. 
Josh Hutchinson: Now Sarah has End Witch Hunts News. 
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts News. We've just discussed the different meanings of the word witch and how sometimes fantasy witches are used for fun and entertainment, but there is absolutely nothing fun or entertaining about real life witchcraft accusations.
Sarah Jack: Natural disasters happen, illness strikes, hard times come, humans make poor choices, act with malice, or harm others through negligence. These are all part of the human experience. They should prompt us to support one another and address real causes, not make witchcraft accusations. Let's work together to reject witchcraft accusations as explanations for misfortunes or human wrongdoing.
Sarah Jack: [01:06:00] Accept that destructive behavior is part of human nature, requiring understanding and intervention rather than demonization. Protect vulnerable community members from divisive suspicion. Promote understanding and accountability. Address problems through dialogue and proven solutions. Stand against the persecution of innocent people.
Sarah Jack: We've all experienced moments when imagination overtakes reality. Whether late at night when concerns grow larger than life, or when rumors start to reshape our views of situations and people. That's not weakness, it's human. We can recognize these moments and have the courage to admit when fear has clouded our judgment.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah. 
Sarah Jack: You're welcome. 
Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for joining us for this Halloween edition of Witch Hunt. 
Sarah Jack: Join us again next week. 
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great Halloween and a beautiful time trick-or-treating. 

Show Notes

Returning guest, Dr. Scott Culpepper, professor at Dordt University, joins us to examine the social phenomenon known as the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and early 1990s. Drawing from his extensive research, including his forthcoming scholarly work and his novel “The Demonologists’ Daughters,” Dr. Culpepper analyzes how this period of heightened social anxiety developed and influenced American society.

We explore the cultural context of this moral panic, examining its effects on institutions from childcare centers to entertainment, while drawing meaningful parallels to witch hunts. Our discussion includes analysis of media influence, law enforcement response, and the intersection with broader social changes of the era. Through careful historical examination, we consider how this period continues to inform our understanding of mass social fears and institutional responses to perceived threats. Are we in a Satanic Panic again?

Dr. Culpepper’s Blog, The Imaginative Historian

Youtube – Connecticut Witch Trials with Dr. Scott Culpepper

Dr. Scott Culpepper Professor Profile

The Demonologists’ Daughters by K. Scott Culpepper

American Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970-2000 by Sarah A. Hughes

The Exorcist Effect: Horror, Religion, and Demonic Belief by Joseph P. Laycock and Eric Harrelson

The International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices

Call on the World Health Organization to re-add sunscreen to the list of essential medicines

Zoom Event World Day Against Witch Hunts 10th August, 2024:

International Alliance to End Witch Hunts

IK Ero On Next Steps For Ending Witch Hunts TINAAWAHP

Sanguma: Everybody’s Business

Justice for Witches, Pardon Campaign

End Witch Hunts

Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project

Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project

Maryland Witches Exoneration Project

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