The following article was written by Paranormal Researcher Chad Lewis.
It was the 1980s, and after weeks of anticipation, Halloween night finally arrived for millions of excited kids throughout the country. A palpable fear permeated through the hordes of little witches, werewolves, and superheroes, as fate seemed hell-bent on ruining their entire night.
You see, this last stop on their trick-or-treat route was not meant to add to their plunder of sugary treats. Instead, this all important waylay was aimed at calming the frazzled nerves of their terrified parents. As the hospital staff painstakingly sent each kid’s collection of goodies through the X-ray machines, parents braced for the worst. Believe it or not, parents in the 1980s clamored to spend the last hours of Halloween at the local hospital.
For a kid, nothing can kill the excitement and danger of Halloween night as quickly as standing in line at the hospital instead of wolfing down your hard-earned sugary treats as you and your friends trade away your least liked candy. I know this to be a fact, because when I was young, my mother fell victim to the hysteria sweeping the country and dragged my brother and me to our local hospital to ensure that our candy was safe to eat.
I have a fuzzy memory of impatiently standing in line in a sterile hospital room as a concerned nurse instructed us not to eat anything from our bag of goodies until it was deemed safe. Apparently, our parents were more concerned with razor blades than radiation being blasted through our candy.
Looking back, this was the start of my life-ling fascination with the spooky holiday, but questions outside of just candy continued to plague me. How did the holiday start? Where did the name Halloween come from? Were costumes always meant to be scary? Why do we carve pumpkins, and many, many more questions.
I spent the next several decades researching the mysterious folklore and customs that surround All Hallow’s Eve, and I am amazed with what I have discovered. From fun family games of divination, to pranks and vandalism, the holiday has morphed and progressed throughout the decades. Today Halloween is a multi-billion-dollar industry complete with haunted hayrides, scary yard decorations, and horror movie marathons.
However, what you will quickly discover at my program—The History of Halloween: Folklore & Customs with Chad Lewis, taking place in Manitowoc Public Library’s Balkansky Community Room on Wednesday, September 30, from 6-7PM—is that today’s rituals and folklore cannot hold a jack-o-lantern’s candle to the oddness of the holiday’s origin. This program will give you a greater history of the holiday and its unique place in America’s modern traditions. And who knows—it might just spark a few new traditions for you, as well!
