Protecting the Porch: Halloween Prank Horrors

Long before candy and costumes, Halloween was a night of chaos. Young people looked forward to a night of unbridled rebellion while responsible property owners feared for their livelihood. Halloween was a night of anything-goes and, unfortunately, anything went far too often. Townsfolk and police officers simply had to brace themselves and wait for October to pass. What they'd wake up to in the morning was anyone's guess. The real question was whether or not there would be enough room in the hospitals and morgues come November 1st.

Listen in as we reveal the shocking history behind this family-friendly holiday that once terrorized North America! 

This time we were able to fit in 5 vintage ads:

• Camel's Cigarettes
• Kleenex
• Newbro's Herpicide "The Original Remedy that kills the Dandruff Germ."
• Sozodont Tooth Powder
• GORDON Hats

DISCLAIMER: We here at Forgotten Felonies do not actually want you to smoke cigarettes. Please don't. It is bad for your health. 

Transcript

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What do potatoes, immigration, and pranks have in common? You're about to find out on this episode of Forgotten Felonies! Welcome back to Forgotten Felonies. I'm Monica. And I'm Olivia. And this is where we take you back in time to rediscover the tales of vintage villainy that time forgot. This episode is going to be a little different because Halloween is coming up and we wanted to do something special. You know, when people think of Halloween today, candy, costumes, haunted houses, pumpkin carving, it feels like a thoroughly American holiday. But its roots are decidedly older, darker, and way more tangled than that. And in fact, a key turning point for how Halloween came to be such a fixture in the U. S. ties directly into one of the great tragedies of 19th century Ireland, the Great Famine, or as it's called in Ireland, the Great Hunger. So let's walk that back in time. Before Halloween ever meant costumes, candy, and plastic skeletons, it started with something much older, a Celtic festival called Samhain. That's spelled S-A-M-H-A-I-N, but said Samhain. It was celebrated in Ireland and parts of Scotland thousands of years ago. Marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter, a season that, for ancient farming communities, meant darkness, cold, and uncertainty. The Celts believed that this turning point between fall and winter blurred the line between the living and the dead. The idea was that spirits could slip through that thin veil for one night, wandering among the living. Some were thought to be friendly ancestors, but others not so much. So people lit big bonfires on the hills, dressed up in animal skins or masks, and made offerings to keep the bad spirits away. Think of it as a community ritual equal parts survival, superstition, and social gathering. Then came Christianity, and, like it did with a lot of older traditions, the church didn't erase Samhain. It sort of absorbed it. century, the church created All Saints Day on November 1st to honor all the saints and martyrs. The night before became All Hallows Eve, which over time morphed into Halloween. So you can see how those ancient bonfires and ghost stories gradually blended with prayers and church bells. In the Middle Ages, people in Britain and Ireland developed a practice called souling. Where poorer folks, often children, would go door to door offering to pray for the souls of a family's dead relatives in exchange for little cakes called... soul cakes. That tradition mixed with another custom called guising, where children dressed in costumes and performed songs or jokes in exchange for treats. So you can see how these things morphed into what we see today on Halloween. Do you think it used to be? Trick for treat instead of trick or treat. No. Well, because they were performing like little tricks and stuff for a treat. Oh, true. Yes. But, um... We will get to that. It took on a whole different meaning later. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Yeah. You'll see. It's pretty crazy. So the early version of Halloween wasn't about horror movies or haunted houses. It was about the cycle of life and death, changing seasons, and the hope that a few candles and disguises could keep the darkness at bay, both literal and spiritual. Now, if we fast forward a good thousand years or so, we land in one of the darkest chapters in Ireland's history, the Great Hunger, also called the Great Famine. It started in the mid-1840s when a mysterious blight hit the potato crops. Almost overnight, the fields that had fed millions turned to ash, black and rotten. For rural Irish families, the potato wasn't just part of the diet; it was the diet. It grew well in poor soil, could survive harsh weather, and provided enough nutrition to keep large families going. When that one crop failed, everything else came crashing down with it. The blight wasn't a one-time thing either. It came back season after season for years. The first outbreak hit in 1845, and by 1847, famine— was everywhere. People were starving. Families were being evicted from their cottages because they couldn't pay rent, and disease spread through the workhouses that were supposed to help. Historians estimate that about a million people died, but the true number was likely much higher. And then came the exodus. Between one and two million Irish men, women, and children packed up what little they had and boarded ships for America, Canada, and Australia. Between the years 1845 and 1851. Now, the voyages themselves were absolutely brutal, so bad, in fact, that some of the ships were called coffin ships because of the number of passengers who never made it to the shore. So, for example, in the year 1847 alone, there were 17, 465 documented deaths at sea, just in that one year. Sometimes a ship would arrive with more than half of the passengers and the crew deceased. Woof. Yeah. That's... Wow. Yeah, that's insane. I mean, they were already starving before they left. And then conditions weren't good, and diseases and everything. And so. Scurvy. By the time they made it, I mean, they were passed away and dead and it was, it was really terrible. Well, I wonder... They wouldn't have just kept their bodies on the ship until they landed. They did. Really? Yeah. I would have thought they would have just thrown him overboard. Nope. If you look at the museum, there's a website, an Irish museum, and they have a website that talks about it. But yeah, they had to, I forget what they said it was. They had to pay people to go in and pull the bodies out. And then also there were some like... Hoeing hook or something that they would use for some of them to pull them out, because some people just absolutely wouldn't touch the bodies. Yeah, if they were that, like... Yeah, how long had they been in the ships? Yeah, pretty bad. Gross. And that just makes it worse, though. Like, everyone would get sick. I know, yeah. Even just being around the decomposition. So they probably put all the bodies in the same, like, one place, but... Yikes. But still. Yeah, and over the summer. I mean, the weather and like... Yeah. So pretty bad. Most of those who did make it alive ended up in places like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. They arrived with very little money, but they brought something else with them. They brought their culture, their folklore, their faith, and all of those Celtic customs that had been passed down for generations, including the ones connected to Samhain. When Irish immigrants began to settle across the United States, they carried with them their stories of spirits and fairies, their bonfires and their traditions of dressing up. To ward off ghosts, they used these customs. Over time, those customs started to mix with American harvest festivals and autumn celebrations that were already happening here. And little by little, Halloween as we know it began to take shape. Right there in immigrant neighborhoods filled with Irish families who were rebuilding their lives. So in a strange way, the tragedy of the Great Famine helped plant the seeds of one of America's most beloved holidays. Of all, born from ancient Celtic superstition, made its way across the Atlantic, carried not by conquerors or missionaries, but by families fleeing hunger, loss, and hardship. And it found new life in the streets of America. In cities like Boston, New York, and Chicago, Irish neighborhoods were packed with new arrivals who were determined to hold onto bits of home. On October nights, you'd hear laugh-and singing spilling out into the streets, the same kind of spirited mischief that once surrounded Samhain back in Ireland. Young people played tricks, told ghost stories, and sometimes dressed up to scare their neighborhoods, which was equal parts fun and defiance. So, Olivia, did you see those pictures that I sent you of those old costumes? Indeed, I did. What were your thoughts? So I'd seen a lot of them before. Because they always pop up around Halloween. Mm-hmm. But... Yeah. They did a great job. This one? Uh-huh. It looks like... We'll post it. But if you ever watched Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood... Oh, my gosh. And you know... Lady Elaine. Yes, Lady Elaine in the... Where does she live in? The merry-go-round? A carousel. Yeah. Yeah. Their faces look like that. Wow. Yeah. This is... Terrifying. I feel like that one can't be real. I don't know. Because the teeth carved on it are just too... Yeah. Too good. Maybe that's AI. But you know what? Spooky. Yeah. Yeah. That would be terrifying just to have them running around at night. Crazy. All right. One of the clearest examples of this transformation came from a very practical discovery. Pumpkins. So back in Ireland, people carved lanterns out of turnips or beets, which was not exactly an easy task. And I did find a picture of a... turnip that was carved and it's from about 1850 and it's in a museum over there. They preserved it so they preserved this turnip, yes, they preserved the carved turnip. Wow, yeah. So it's in the museum and we will we will get that picture posted as well. And it's, I mean, it's frightening. That's really impressive, though, that they've preserved a turnip for like 150 years. Yeah. Yeah. And that's science, baby. Yeah. So anyway, you know, they used to do that with the turnips or the beets. But when the Irish immigrants got here and saw these big, you know, soft pumpkins growing everywhere in North America, they were like, 'Well, that is much easier to carve.' And so just like that, the American jack-o'-lantern was born. Way easier to carve. Those carved faces, they weren't just decoration. They were originally meant to ward off evil spirits or mischievous ghosts. So again, just a blend of old superstition and, of course, new opportunity because the pumpkins were easy. Over time, though, the practice shifted from protecting your house to decorating your porch. I'm sure a lot of listeners right now have jack-o'-lanterns, you know, on their porches. Meanwhile... Those small town and city neighborhoods began holding autumn gatherings, part harvest celebration, part costume party. Folks bobbed for apples, told Ford, and played games by candlelight. Children would, quote, guise. So that's the old Irish term, like a disguise. They would go door to door in disguise, forming songs or silly jokes in exchange for those small treats. And that eventually evolved into trick-or-treating, but I mean, they didn't call it that yet. the late 1800s, Halloween had begun to spread beyond the Irish enclaves. Americans loved the pageantry, the costumes, and the the thrill of a harmless scare. Magazines published Halloween party ideas, department stores sold decorations, and civic groups encouraged organized community celebrations to keep things respectable. So while Halloween's bones were old and Celtic, its skin became distinctly American, shaped by Irish resilience, immigrant creativity, and the melting pot energy of the 19th century life. So in a sense, the Irish didn't just bring Halloween here. They kind of reimagined it. And they took a night once rooted in fear of the spirit world and turned it into something playful. So by the time the calendar rolled into the early 1900s, Halloween in America was booming, but it wasn't yet the family-friendly night that we know today. In fact, for a while, Halloween had a bit of a reputation. Welcome home, dear. Well, where's dinner? Expect me to wait all night? Jingle nerves bring words that hurt. Suppose a hidden phonograph were taking down your words all during the day. How often would you be embarrassed? These hurt your friends and your loved ones, and they hurt you too. Watch your nerves. Get your full amount of sleep every night. Eat regularly and sensibly. Find time for recreation and smoke camels. For camels costlier tobacco never gets on your nerves. Costlier tobaccos. Camels are made from finer, more expensive tobaccos than any other brand of cigarettes. Camels. They never get on your nerves. Let's just take a second to explain how this whole episode even came to be. Olivia suggested that we do something special for Halloween and we started looking for cases that may have taken place like on Halloween. I found a few different cases, like a murder where a man and a woman who were on drugs wound up robbing and murdering a truck driver on Halloween. And there's another one where a man attacked and killed a little girl two days before Halloween on October 28th. She was out doing some festivities with her cousins, and then she was going to walk home. But she never made it. And they later found her body in a cemetery. And the guy just kind of admitted to it, and there wasn't really a trial or anything. Wow. Yeah, so I didn't want to cover the one about the truck driver because it didn't really have anything to do with the holiday itself, other than that was the day that it happened. And then, yeah, like the one about the little girl, it would have been perfect because, you know, it had something to do with the holiday, but there wasn't really much info. After that, because there wasn't a trial, so we couldn't really put together like a solid episode. Yeah, we found a few more things that took place on Halloween, but most of them didn't have a lot of background information on the cases or the people involved. I looked for cases on Halloween as well, and I ran into, you know, the same thing. There was lots of incidents where, like, farmers had accidentally shot someone, for example, but there was... no background info on the person, no history of crime, like no backstory, no big, huge write-ups that were, you know, day after day after day. So then I thought, 'But maybe we'll go a different direction.' Maybe we could cover a case that had to do with something like witchcraft or a case of, you know, clinical vampirism where someone was consuming the blood of the victim, you know, not necessarily on Halloween, but just a Halloween-ish type of crime. Hans would have been great. Oh, yeah. We'll just put that one out again. But then, . com sent out an email to all of their subscribers about Halloween and how the holiday had a very violent past. And that made something kind of click. And so those many, many cases that I had found about men like farmers shooting people on Halloween, they all did have ties to the holiday itself. And it was very common, in fact, for people to be killed on Halloween. And it was quite often children. And if you want to look this up for yourself, use our coupon code. Heck yeah. For Cotton20. Yes. F-O-R-G-O-T-T-E-N-2-0. All right. So it turns out that Halloween used to be a night full of serious mayhem. And I mean, felonies— we will call that. That had adults arming themselves to protect their property. And on November 1st, a lot of parents were tasked with burying their children. I had no idea. So, in towns and cities across the country, October 31st had become a night when kids, mostly teenage boys and some young adults, adults, some married men—actually— pulled pranks that ranged from harmless fun to serious and often deadly trouble. They would soap windows. They would topple outhouses. They would switch around street signs, sometimes let livestock loose, you know, just to cause chaos. Some livestock would actually be put up on people's roofs and gates were taken off of fences. Fences were often completely torn down. Can you imagine, Olivia? Building a fence is a big deal. And then just a mob of children comes through and literally rips it apart. Well, I feel bad for the livestock, those innocent animals. To be put on top of a roof? Yeah. How do you even do that? My gosh. Especially back then. You don't have the, like, big machinery. I know. How are they getting a cow up there? I know. I guess maybe stack some hay up to make like... Did you know cows can go up stairs but not down? How would you get the cow back down then? Oh my gosh. Just what a headache. But yeah, even sidewalks. So way back then, sidewalks were built out of wood. And so they would rip those up. Like, it was crazy. In some cities, I'm not even kidding, everything that was loose, like, takeable, would be stolen from people's yards and massive bonfires would be built by the boys. And again, sometimes married men, they would just burn up everything. Sorry, honey. I'm going out with the boys tonight. It's Halloween. Gotta go play some pranks. Like, absolute nutso. Like, wild. So... Yes, newspapers of the time were full of stories about Halloween pranks. If you guys go to newspapers. com, get the free seven-day trial, just search for Halloween pranks. Between like 1860 and 1940, you will find so many articles. It is insane. But yeah, so it was part seasonal mischief, part youthful rebellion, and partly just an excuse to do what you couldn't get away with on any other night. It's like The Purge. Did you ever watch that movie? Uh-uh. It's like 24 hours, no laws, no rules. Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, and a lot of the articles were like, 'Oh, it's pre-Halloween pranks.' Like they'd go out and start early and just, it was crazy. So this wasn't entirely new. Remember, Halloween had always carried that sense of world turned upside down, right? A night when normal rules didn't quite apply. But in the growing... cities of early 20th century America, those old Celtic ideas about mischief and disguise collided with modern urban life, and things got messy really fast. Some communities even considered banning Halloween altogether. So, what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at just a handful of the cases that Olivia and I found. But trust me when I say that this is barely a blip on the radar of what was happening on Halloween night every year in this country for decades. Why wash handkerchiefs? Use Kleenex disposable tissues instead. Relieve yourself of the revolting job of handkerchief washing. Insist that the family use Kleenex for colds. Linux costs less than having handkerchiefs laundered. Get a box today! First, we'll take a visit back in time to Muskegon, Michigan, on the night of Monday, October 31st, 1898. At the time, Muskegon was a town with a thriving lumber industry, boasting approximately 24, 000 people, so it was pretty big in 1898. Many of those people who lived there were adolescent boys and young men who had probably been planning out their pranks for months in advance. I imagine they really just had a blast thinking of what they were going to do next. Now, Mr. Michael Burns, who lived on the corner of Harris... Street and Mann Avenue, had been the target of Halloween pranks every year. And this year, he tried to prepare himself. He'd been building a sidewalk. Walk, so remember, out of wood, in front of his house earlier that day, and he was very concerned that the mob of boys was going to come that night and rip it up, or perhaps they would run off with his wagon again. And keep in mind, that's the equivalent of Grand Theft Auto, right? He's like, they're going to steal my wagon again. So he wired up the spokes of his wagon so that it couldn't be moved.

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30 that evening, a number of boys— 30 to 40 of them— swarmed onto his property, attempting to take his wagon. Mr. Burns fired a gun with a blank and it scared them away. All scattered, and then he went inside for some supper. While he was eating, the boys returned. When he finished eating, he saw them outside. He rushed out with a whip. So he starts whipping at this group of boys. You can't get off my wand. And he wound up giving one boy such a severe cut. across his ear that he started bleeding like quite a bit. So Mr. Burns took that boy into his house so his wife could help, like, you know, address the wound or whatever. And then Mr. Burns went down to his basement. He was down in the basement for about 10 minutes when he heard a noise on the sidesteps above him. These were the steps outside that someone would need to climb to enter the house through the side door. He then heard his wife shouting at someone to go away. So he's like, 'Oh no, they're back.' So Mr. Burns realized the mob must be back, and now they were coming for the house. He grabbed his gun, which was loaded with buckshot, and he ran out of the basement. And around the house to the side. He saw someone running back down the steps. Now he says that he didn't really aim the gun, like he didn't, you know, take care of it. To actually aim it, but he just had it pointing upward when he took the shot. And when the smoke cleared, he saw that he had in fact hit the person. He went in. Inside the house again, like didn't even go and check the person. He just went inside. And then, after a little while, he did go to go find a doctor. Now, Mr. Burns didn't realize that the person he'd hit was dead. He knew that he'd shot a man, and he did want to surrender himself to the authorities. It turns out he had shot and killed a 15-year-old, year-old boy named F. Leslie Parker. Now, sadly, when the police had talked to everybody, the other boy said that young Leslie Parker had just arrived when the whip incident had occurred. And, you know, the injured boy had gone into the house with Mr. Burns. So, according to the other boys, Leslie Parker had simply gone up to the door after those 10 minutes had passed to ask when his friend was going to come back outside. And then he was shot. Burns! I know, it's super sad. The buckshot got him in several places. It mostly hit him in the face, with stray shots going into his head, right arm, and breast. One passed into the right lung, but the one that caused his death was probably the one that went through his right eye. That's what the paper said. Mm-hmm. I mean, that would make sense. I feel like it would have been quick, at least. Yeah. Yep, that was in Michigan. Now fast forward five years to 1904 in Sioux City, Iowa. 1904 was a big year for Halloween. So, Sioux City, Iowa. On Tuesday, November 1st, the Sioux City Journal printed an article with the headline, 'Boys have a merry time.' Halloween pranks keep people guessing, but police had little trouble. From their standpoint, it was a quiet celebration. The headlines had multiple parts in the old papers, by the way. It was like their version of a too long, didn't read. They gave a very brief summary at the beginning, and then you could decide if you wanted to read more. Yeah, it's true. Just like the main points were the heading and then subheadings. Yes. Yeah, pretty much. So this article begins by explaining that the police made their usual preparations for Halloween. The officers all assembled at the station and received their instructions, which were to do their best to protect property. They were then divided into squads and scattered throughout the city. So keep in mind, this was their norm for Halloween. p. m., the phone began ringing off the hook. But, the article reports, it was hardly destructive at all compared to previous years. It says, quote, 'most part, the youths confined themselves to innocent fun-making, only now and then going too far. And then it gives an example. Hassan Hanun.' A Syrian peddler, sent word to the police that Boyce had carried away his wagon, torn his buggy to pieces, and then smashed a bunch of windows and turned over a bunch of outbuildings. Uh, that was all they did? Yep, so only now and then going too far. Mostly innocent fun making. Remember, the headline said, you know, it was a quiet celebration for the most part. Now, below that, there was a list of the, quote, innocent fun-making that took place that night. So, first, on Center Street, some boys put a plank against a door, then knocked and ran, and when the African-American woman inside came to the door and opened it, the plank fell in and hit her on the head and only did, quote, slight damage. First, the Syrian and now the African-American. Yeah. Like. They seem a little bit racist. Slight damage. Like, I'm sorry. I don't care. She got hit in the head with a plank. Like, that's... That's rude. I love how they're like, 'Oh.' It's people not white. It's just fun making. Right? Right? Ugh, rude. And then, over on West 3rd and Cook Streets, all they did was break the streetlights. Just fun making. Light fun making. Nothing, nothing big. On 13th and Wall Streets, a gang engaged in the pastime of overturning buildings. So sheds, outhouses, you know. Mm-hmm. Oh, and let us not forget to mention what they did to the streetcars, like the buses on tracks that went through town. The boys tied big tin cans to the cars, and they put... bombs on the tracks. Innocent fun making. But no arrests were made, said the police, and all in all, they agreed it had been a quiet night as far as Halloween goes. So that was 1904 in Sioux City, Iowa. The police were just so relieved. Can you believe that? Bombs on the tracks. What? Meanwhile, over in Norton, Kansas, I had to bring this one in because I know we've got some listeners over in Norton and I got a kick out of this. Halloween of 1904 in Norton, a gal named Ruth Coore invited about 30 girls to enjoy some Halloween pranks with her. They all dressed up as ghosts, and then they went out to frolic around town. But before they'd gone even a block, a bunch of dormitory boys— what's said in paper— had harassed them and ruined most of their costumes. And then the article says, 'This is the funniest part,' nevertheless, they had a glorious time, even if they were held up and tied to fences several times. You're welcome. I found an especially gruesome incident in 1904 over in Columbus, Ohio. A city carman, someone who drove those sort of trains on trolley tracks. Saw what he assumed was a Halloween dummy placed on the tracks, so he didn't even slow down. He just kept driving until the cars suddenly stopped. It turns out it was an actual person, and the mangled body forced the car to a stop. They couldn't even identify the body. That is so bad. Yeah. But I mean, that just goes to show how normal it was for like these pranks to be like, here's a dummy on the tracks. Ha ha. We're going to try to make all, you know, freak everybody out. So they have to stop. I mean, it's just crazy. So it's like, that's so normal. Now they're going to actually run over. Actual people not even knowing. It's like crying wolf, you know? It's just crazy. On that very same Halloween night, 1904, over in Port Huron, Michigan, things were a lot worse off, okay? Terrible. Joseph Lambert had threatened prior to Halloween that any pranks played on his farm would be severely punished, and he was not. Around. Just as 27-year-old Roy Lindsay and his seven companions crossed through Farmer Lambert's gate, Lambert and his three hired men opened fire with shotguns from behind a haystack. Roy Lindsay wound up with 23 shots to his groin and legs. All seven of his friends dropped to the ground with shotgun wounds in various parts of the country. Their bodies. When Joseph Lambert spoke to the prosecuting attorney the next day, he said that for several years in a row on Halloween night, he had had his farm employees' limits carried away, his wagons placed on the roofs of nearby barns or other acts committed that cost him time and money to, you know, fix. And the majority of those there that night, they were married men, the oldest of them being 40 years old. Good lord. Yeah. What is maturity? Nubro's Herpicide, the original remedy that kills the dandruff germ. The woman with homely features will not lack attractiveness if her head is crowned with an abundance of beautiful hair. But on the other hand, the finest contour of female face loses much of its attractiveness if the hair is scanty or looks diseased. The dandruff microbe causes dull, brittle, or lusterless hair with later dandruff, itching scalp, and falling hair. Nubro's Herbicide destroys this enemy of beauty and permits the hair to grow as nature intended. A delightful hairdressing gives wonderful results. No oil or dye. Drugstores, $1. Send 10-cent stamps to Herbicide Co., Detroit, Michigan, for a sample. All right, now let's move forward a few years to 1907 over in a small town of Albany, Oregon. I had to look this one up because that's my stomping grounds. So Albany had perhaps somewhere around 4, 000 people at that time, and their younger generation also engaged in the annual Halloween traditions. Thursday, October 31st, all of the gates in the city were removed, as were all of the wooden fences and all of the sidewalks, which again... were made of wood, and all the wood piles in the city, and literally every loose thing left outside. Every loose object that the boys could get their hands on was taken and moved to another part of the city. Thank you. Like, hey, Mr. Jones, I think I have your wagon at my house or like, you know, whatever it was. You wake up and find somebody else's stuff in your yard. This isn't my fence. Yeah, right. All the lumber from someone else's fence is just sitting in a pile in your yard. It's crazy. Also, there was a college in Albany called Albany College, which later moved to Portland and became Lewis and Clark College. Some of the students from the college made entry into the building and, quote, moved the library from its usual place to other quarters. So does that mean that they moved all the books or what? Yes. So the article goes on to say that while the students were making their hasty getaway, the two men who were placed on guard by the faculty, but they were asleep, they woke up and they chased the students, finally capturing one when they threatened to shoot him. And then another student had dropped his hat while he was running away, so it was used to identify him the next morning. And then they had to move all the books back to the library that following day as well. Now, you know, that wasn't so terribly bad. There was no bloodshed, just a threat of bloodshed. But I mean, what a headache. Can you imagine every loose object in town being moved? And that's just normal for Halloween. Like, oh, here comes Halloween. Everybody brace yourselves. Now, also in 1907, over in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Now, this one is kind of weird, and I don't really understand it. There was a young couple. That was engaged to be married. The girl, Mona Goini, was going to go out dressed up in a suit of boys' clothes. Her fiancé, John C. Severka, thought that she was trying to jilt him, and he was so upset about it that he committed suicide. What is trying to jilt him? Yeah, I had to look that up. It's like the term jilted lover. So basically he thought that she was ending their romance. And I'm like, why? She was just going to dress up as a guy for Halloween. So I'm like, yeah, I was all over. This on the internet like what in the world? Why would that? What um so maybe she thought he was rejecting her femininity and thus their future together like that's what the internet suggested or maybe he was just a possessive control freak and he told her he didn't want her to go and she said she was going anyway and he was like, 'Fine, then I'm gonna kill myself So, I don't know. Like Romeo and Juliet. Hmm. Star-crossed lovers. Maybe he was like, 'Wait, where did you get that suit? You must be seeing someone else.' I don't know. It just seems very weird. Yeah, and then not too far away, one Washington, D. C. Paper, so the Evening Star, still in the year 1907, they ran a piece under a disturbingly casual subheading of 'Popular Fad.' It described the kinds of antics that had become routine on Halloween night, so I'm going to read you a short excerpt. One of the most popular fads last night was the use of long tin tubes through which the boys propelled beans or putty at passers-by or rattled showers of the missiles against window panes. Tin cans and other discarded articles, in some instances including defunct cats, were tied to doorknobs and the doorbells violently rung. The phrase 'defunct cats' jumps right off the page at me. When I read it, I thought I might know what it meant, but I googled it just to be sure. And I was correct. 'Defunct' was a way of saying dead. So the boys were tying dead cats to people's doorknobs and then ringing their doorbells. And the paper refers to it as a fad. Like it was just another Halloween trend. Like all the boys are doing it, right? Where's my cat? So that same article goes on to mention that a number of boys were actually arrested that night for disorderly conduct because they were pelting pedestrians with flowers and beans, not even for the dead cats, okay? But because random pedestrians were walking by and the boys were throwing flour on them and hitting them with beans. And they had been warned in advance not to do that by a major Sylvester. By midnight on Halloween of 1907 in Washington, D. C., 16 boys were actually taken before Captain Dale or the desk sergeant in the 8th Precinct. Anyway, let's go forward to 1913 and head over to Chicago, Illinois. That Halloween was rough. So it was on a Friday. And oh my goodness, where do we even begin? And all of this was in Chicago. They had their hands full. A 15-year-old boy, Morgan Campbell, who lived at 19... Larchmont Avenue, paid the penalty with his life after trying to play a Halloween prank. He climbed up a street light, and this was a carbon arc light. I looked up. Pictures and they look like really intimidating. Actually, they're very bright. I'm not an expert on these things, but there are these two carbon thingies. They first touch together to light and then they pull apart, and there's a beam of light that arcs between them and burns very, very brightly. So 15-year-old Morgan climbs up there with the goal of pulling down the light and he wound up touching the carbon. And then he fell to the ground and he wound up dying an hour later. Somewhere else in Chicago, someone pulled a fire alarm for no reason, just as a prank, and then the battalion chief, Thomas Kenny, he wound up running over a man named Tommaso Lequinto, who couldn't get out of the way fast enough. It said Tommaso was expected to die of his injuries, but there was no fire. It was a prank. And then someone got run over by the fire truck. In another part of the city, over at the McLaren School Playground at York and Laughlin Streets, a gang of very young boys, most barely out of elementary school, beat up and robbed a man named Jacob Zussman. They robbed him of $17. And that has the purchasing power of about $556. 32 in 2025 American dollars. Yeah, and I mean, that's actually nuts. Not bad. I can see why that would be enticing to a kid just out of elementary school. Ruffians. Thugs. Ruffians. Thugs. Wonder where they went when they grew up, like, down a terrible path. You know. But it's just pranks. It's all in good fun. It was just Halloween. They can do whatever they want. So, still, Chicago, same night, 1913. Another gang, this one wearing masks, chased after a 12-year-old girl named Bessie Gerber. She was absolutely terrified and was running for her dear life when she tripped and fell against a curb stone and wound up getting a deep gash in her forehead and had to get stitches. But the newspaper reports that the biggest to-do that night was the gang of nearly 100 boys who had swarmed onto 43rd Street near... Indiana Avenue, each with a box or a gate or a barrel or a cart, all things that had been stolen from people's yards, of course, and they were stacking it all up on the streetcar tracks, blocking streetcar traffic, and they were about to set it all on fire when the police arrived. And it took police... nearly an hour to clear the barricade and allow the traffic to resume. Now, get this, the next day, in a paper called the Chicago Defender, there was a really interesting little article that just made me smirk. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. It's fairly short, so I'm just going to read it to you. Here's what it says. If you want to fully realize how old you are, let your mind wander back to the little country town in which you lived and to those Halloween nights when fences, boxes, and everything that mischievous boys could get their hands on went to feed the flames of the bonfire in the vacant lot. The joys of youth are never quite equaled in after years, and the city boy has lost the best part of his life by not being reared in the country. Many mothers and fathers—fathers— are prone to chastise a child for some little innocent prank, forgetting that they pass through the same stage. We are only young once, so the most should be made out of it. So the paper was defending all that behavior happening. Yes. Like, oh, come on, you were young once. Let them be kids. Let them light everything on fire. Let them destroy the city for one night. Like quit your belly aching. So it was ridiculous. I mean, kids died and they're like, oh, come on. He just climbed up to touch a light. He was just going to take it down. Come on. Accidents happen. It's okay. But yeah, so that very same Halloween. 1913, but over in Los Angeles, a man named J. D. Stickle went to a woman's door, and when she opened it, he sprayed her face with ammonia from a toy gun. She lost her eyesight! Her name was Elsie Darling. He blinded her, all for just a Halloween prank. So, did he get charged, do you know? Um, I'm not sure. I didn't, like... Look for follow-ups. I sure would hope so. Yeah. I mean, my gosh, it's crazy. Now, there's another story from 1924. So we're fast forwarding. Forwarding 11 years. And this is over in New Ulm, Minnesota. So we have to share this. I cannot believe this one. I mean, I do believe it. I read it in the papers. I know it's true. But I mean, it's unbelievable what the circumstances are. It was Friday, October 31st, 1924, when 42-year-old Joseph Snyder, a farmer... in Springfield, Minnesota, decided he wasn't going to deal with those Halloween pranksters anymore. He'd had it. Now, I don't know what they had done in years prior, but he was not about to deal with it again. So maybe he'd been the target. Maybe he just knew what others had dealt with. I don't know. I did not see his name in any papers prior to... 1824. So whatever it was, I mean, it can't have been like that serious in regards to him personally, but that evening he got into his coal shed. 7 o'clock p. m. with his shotgun, and he sat, and he waited, and he waited, and he waited. It was 11 o'clock p. m. when he heard a group of children approaching. As soon as they were within shooting range, he opened the door of his shed, took aim at the group of children, and fired. Point blank in their direction. The first shot struck 13-year-old Mayette Byland squarely in the back and neck, mortally wounding her. She dropped to the ground. He then cocked his gun and fired again. Striking seven more children while they were running, and only one other, Leighton Black, also 13, was seriously wounded. Mr. Schneider picked up up the body of Mayat Bailin and carried her into his home. She had been groaning on the ground. He left her with his wife while he went to go get a doctor. Within minutes of the doctor arriving, young Mayotte was dead. Mr. Schneider then carried her body to the home of her parents. An hour later, Mr. Joseph Schneider, a father of eight children, ranging in ages from 2 to 18, was arrested and put in jail, and ultimately he was sentenced to 7 to 25 years in the state prison. Like, what did he expect, though? Idiot. Sinful neglect. How is it possible for a sane man with good teeth to destroy them through careless neglect? Sozodont is positively beneficial. It has made the toothbrush habit a real pleasure. Sulzodont. Tooth powder. The natural complement of Sulzodont liquid is a beautiful polisher. Absolutely free from grit and acid. Are you using it? You ought to be.

Three forms: 46:06

liquid, powder, or paste. So it definitely sounds like Halloween used to be really, really wild and out of hand. Yeah, you could definitely say that. And this went on for a while. long, long time. According to History. com, this continued on into the Great Depression. Now, if you're familiar with the Great Depression, you know that Black Tuesday. This led to a decade of economic woes and hardship in the United States. To make the Halloween antics even more severe, according to History. com, it reached a fever pitch in 1933. So I did a search on newspapers. com specifically for 1933. And I found a lot more of the same. So things very similar to what I just told you— all history. com specifically points out—suggest that teen boys were flipping cars over, sawing off telephone poles, and vandalizing things all across the country. I found more reports of people being shot as farmers continued to arm themselves against the packs of boys who ran through the towns like a locust plague, destroying everything in their wake. It was just, what a terrible night. I'm sure the kids looked forward to it, but the adults and the cops, like, oh my gosh. There was one woman, Mrs. Lillian Blanchard from Erie, Pennsylvania, who lost her life. Her left eye that night when a bunch of young rowdies— what they were referred to as young rowdies— they rang her doorbell and then hurled, quote, 'Missiles' at her when she opened the door. One of the missiles, which I assume were rocks, but it really could have been anything, shattered her glasses and some of the glass went into her eyeball. Um, I'm wearing glasses and I want to take them off now. That sounds horrible. Yeah. So yeah, that was 1933. I even found an article printed on November 8th, 1933, in the St. John Times Globe from St. John. John in the province of New Brunswick up in Canada that was talking about the quote 'Halloween hooligans' that had gone around terrorizing farmers by throwing rocks at their house. Houses and then the farmers got arrested when they shot guns to scare them away. So the journalist was saying, you know, that it was really unfair that the boys pulling the pranks never had to take responsibility for the things that they did, but the people who reacted were always held accountable. That's very different from Chicago. It's wild that this was even happening up in Canada. Yeah, yeah. And that surprised me too, actually. There was also an article I saw from Vancouver, British Columbia. So, I mean, it was happening. All over in Canada as well. Now in Butte, Montana, the Butte Daily Post reported that the girls in town were pulling pre-Halloween pranks. They were breaking windows, breaking and stealing fences, busting fences, and all around, quote, raising Ned. Back in the early 1900s, raising Ned was slang for raising hell, but it was polite enough to print in the newspapers. The people referred to the Halloween of 1933 as Black Halloween. Like they referred to the stock market crash as Black Tuesday. Like it was that much worse. Worse from their perspective. So it was Black Halloween, the worst one ever. So that's really when civic leaders, schools, and neighborhood groups decided to step in and try to to reinvent the holiday. So instead of like banning it or trying to get rid of Halloween altogether, they really worked to try to tame it. And so it was in the 19... 20s and the 30s that towns started organizing things like parades and community parties, haunted houses, and costume contests. To try to keep the kids occupied and keep them out of trouble. So by 1933, I mean, there were already attempts being made to calm things down. Parents had set up fun little activities where kids could go from house to house to get different things. Like at one house, they would get a sheet so that they would look like a ghost. And at the next house, they might get a mask or, you know, another part of the costume. At another house, they might get cookies. And at another house, there might be a fun game for them to play and so on. So it would be like a neighborhood community thing. And all the kids would go to different little stations or stops at different houses. Now, I found an intriguing article in The Plain Dealer in 1933 from Cleveland, Ohio, that tells of two little girls, Lunetta May, who was dressed as a woman, up in a Mexican dress. She was 11 years old and she was with her friend, Marion Johnston, who was also 11 and was dressed up as a gypsy. They had run up to the door of a man named J. Harl Copeland. He was a commercial artist living at 3197 Warrington Road in Shaker Heights. So they approached his door with the intention of saying what kids were saying back in 1933 in Cleveland, Ohio. And it was, we crave eats. So it wasn't trick or treat. It was, we crave eats. Eats and the article says that, if the eats had not been great, then they might have soaked the windows so like to get back at him for not giving him something good, they would have soaked his windows. Now, instead of Mr. Copeland opening up and giving them cookies or candy or whatever, he had actually been hiding in his bushes waiting for children to approach. And when he saw them coming, he stood up and squirted them with automobile grease all over their hair, ears, eyes, mouth, noses, and their costumes. So the older brothers later gathered a gang and went back to his house three times that night to front him. But he came out with a bat, you know, swinging and everything. He was going to attack these kids and make sure they didn't come on his property. But the third time that they showed up, he apologized to the boys for having given the girl so much grease. And he actually was charged and convicted of assault and battery. Oh, well, I mean... The girls hadn't done anything, so I agree with that one. I know. I mean, yeah. And he said he thought they were coming up to soap his windows, and so he was going to teach them a lesson. You know, first. And covered him like he ruined their clothes. And so after he was convicted, he apologized. He had to apologize to them and their parents. And the article, I can't remember which girl— I think it was Marion. It said that her beautiful blonde curly hair was the pride and joy of her parents. What? Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing I'm most proud of— is my daughter's hair, and he ruined it. So weird. But anyway, I think that the paper was just trying to... Talk it up and make it sound much worse than it was. As they usually do. Let's be honest. I know. I doubt that that's what they were most worried about. But maybe they were. Maybe they were terrible parents. I don't know. Anyway, so yeah, after this, you know, time goes on, and along came the real game changer— trick or treating. All the hat you could want for $3. If it's a Gordon. Style, quality, and again, style. Style means what a hat looks like today. Quality means what it looks like three months from today. There are good $5 hats, but not more than $3 for the price is for hat. Gordon Hats, $3. The idea for trick-or-treating caught on in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s as a way to channel that old prank energy into something positive. But really, the term trick-or-treat actually originated in Canada. Canada was also getting really tired of all the pranks and nonsense. So they were taming the holiday there too. The earliest recorded use of the phrase 'trick-or-treat' was actually in 1927 in a paper called The Blackie Times in Blackie, Alberta, Canada on November 3rd. The excerpt in the paper essentially says that the hoodlums were running through town, destroying everything, and then they would go to the front and back doors of a house to trap the occupants inside, and the youthful captors would then say, 'trick or treat.' Goodness gracious. So it was basically extortion, blackmail, like you have to give the kids a treat, then they wouldn't destroy your property or bother you. Yeah, so basically, the adults had to pay off the kids so that they would leave them alone and not destroy all their stuff. Paying off the wobblies, if you will. Paying off the mob. The wobblies weren't the mob. You never know. Well, remember, he went to go talk to... The mob. Yeah, but he was a wobbly. Yeah, but I think he wanted to... Same difference on Wobbly. You come here. I'm handling up tomatoes. Wobblies were a union. All right. Anyway, but yeah, so that's exactly what it was. They were, it was extortion. It was like, you give us treats and we won't destroy everything. We won't tear apart your steps. We won't, you know, we'll allow you to come out of your home because they held them captive in their home. Here's the deal. You give me a treat? I'll leave you alone. You have my protection. Oh, my gosh. Probably, because other kids come around. We'll tell them. No, they already paid. They gave me a candy bar. They're good. We're straight. They gave me a cookie. You leave them alone. Imagine they all like start fighting. Where's my cut? We're splitting the cookie halves. Yeah. Wild and crazy. So, yeah. And soon this became the norm rather than the exception. Probably in future years, they were like, 'Okay, you know what? I don't need to arm myself.' I just need to have a whole bunch of candy and cookies because I can pay them all off when they come to the door. That's probably, you know, they're probably like, 'Okay, this is all I have to do.' Just make a whole bunch of cookies and just pass them out. And then. And then we'll be safe. Um, yeah. So, uh, Yeah, they didn't have to arm themselves or hide in sheds or hide behind bushes to ambush the mobs of children. Or the married men. Yeah, yeah, or the married men. So, yeah, they... didn't have to arm themselves to shoot kids to death; just had to have you know the treats to pay them off. Now kids could still dress up and roam the neighborhood and knock on doors, but now they were rewarded with candy instead of pulling pranks. And as it caught on more and more, trick or treat became like a friendly negotiation. Like, you know, give us something sweet and we'll keep the tricks to ourselves. So yeah, that earliest recording of the use of trick-or-treat, that was 1927. And at the time of this recording, right now, it is the year 2025. It has been 98 years. Almost a full century. I just want to say, my grandpa is 97. Oh, wow. So. There you go. Yeah. So rather than a frightening threat of extortion, trick or treat has evolved to take on new meaning. Today's children don't even know why they say trick or treat, you know? They have no idea what trick means. Like, they wouldn't have any idea. And if you told them, like, 'well, you better play a trick on that house because they didn't give you candy,' they would never dream of completely dismantling the fences or stealing their gate or lighting everything they owned on fire. Like, never. They would be like, 'Can I put toilet paper in the tree? Can I put forks in the yard?' Yeah. I mean, just, they would never, I don't think they would even dream of doing what people used to do. So after World War II, as sugar rationing ended and the baby boom really took off, the candy companies jumped right in. So they saw... Halloween as marketing gold, right? So by the 1950s, door-to-door trick-or-treating had spread nationwide, and Halloween had fully transformed. From a rough and rowdy night of pranks into a family tradition filled with costumes, candy, and neighborhood fun. And of course, you know, the spooky side never disappeared. We still have ghost stories, haunted houses, and horror movies. And, you know, that keeps the holiday tied to its eerie roots. But what had once been a night that the adults and law enforcement had to brace themselves for became a night of imagination and fun. The masks stayed. But the violence, the destruction, the murder, all the felonies, all of that mellowed out. So by mid-century, Halloween had finally settled into its modern identity. A strange, delightful blend of ancient superstition, immigrant folklore, urban rebellion, and good old-fashioned American marketing. Yay! So that is the history of Halloween. And all the pranks. It was a wild time. Trick or treat! Shoutouts to Ireland, Great Hunger Museum website, history. com, newspapers. com, CBC Canada website, FamilySearch, Ancestry, Find a Grave. And of course to Christian, our commercial guy. We could not do it without Christian. Please, if you would like to get a six-month subscription to newspapers. com, use our coupon code for 20% off. It is FORGOTTEN20. And be sure to follow us on our social medias. Our Facebook is Forgotten Felonies. Our Instagram is at Forgotten underscore Felonies. Our threads account is at Forgotten underscore Felonies. And leave us a review. Rate us. Send us fan mail. Yes, please, we do want reviews! It's fun. Um... Our email is forgottenfelonies at gmail. com. Heck yeah. Yeah. We'd love to hear from you. Only if it's nice. Yay. I'm gonna go see what that loud banging is. Okay. I think it's the girls. I had to bring them today. Okay, hold on. Okay. Would you like to guess what they were doing? What were they doing? Pretending to be Irish river dancers. Oh, wow. How cute. Girls, do you want to say hi?