A Night of Screams

Published: Friday, October 30, 1998

Friday, October 30, 1998

A Night of Screams

Halloween is deeply rooted in traditions dating back to the dark ages and beyond

By Meghan Ward

Daily Bruin Contributor

People all over the nation, young and old, will transform themselves into ghosts, goblins and the Spice Girls tomorrow night in preparation for All Hallow E'en, a night that promises sweet tooths and ghoulish spooks.

For most people, Halloween is a night of good clean fun, complete with horror movies, haunted houses, costume parties and bobbing for apples.

Jake LaTray, of Tarzana, remembers Halloween nights spent wreaking havoc in his hometown in Montana.

"In high school we would play pranks on people, like egging cars," he said.

Lesley Siegel, of Beverly Hills, said the greatest danger trick-or-treaters face in Los Angeles is the wrath of other trick-or-treaters.

"When I was in middle school, the bad kids would throw eggs and steal candy from the other kids," Siegel said.

Raising hell on Halloween dates all the way back to pre-Christian times in Scotland and Ireland, when Celtic priests celebrated the new year on November 1st with a harvest festival called Samhain.

Thus, the eve of Samhain, October 31st, was a night when young people disguised themselves in grotesque masks and carried carved lanterns through the villages.

The Celtic priests believed that on that night the earth would come in close contact with the spiritual world.

Villagers lit bonfires, wore scary costumes and set out food and drinks in order to either frighten or appease the restless spirits they believed were coming to destroy their crops and kill their farm animals.

Today, mischief makers in some parts of the country get a head start and begin their destruction of property on October 30th, otherwise known as Devil's Night or Mischief Night.

Melainie Mansfield, of Manhattan Beach, grew up near Detroit where Devil's Night originated.

"It's a night when you're allowed to go crazy - destroy things and play practical jokes. My friends and I would get together and climb trees and throw eggs at cars," Mansfield said.

Aside from wrapping toilet paper around trees, spraying shaving cream on bushes, soaping windshields, egging houses and ringing doorbells, mischief makers sometimes take the fun a step too far.

In 1984, a record 810 fires consumed trash cans, cars and abandoned buildings in some Detroit neighborhoods.

Although Devil's Night is not celebrated in Los Angeles, the destructive ritual has spread from the Midwest to the East Coast, where New Jersey and Washington D.C. face their own share of fires each year.

The second predecessor to Halloween dates back to the Dark Ages in Europe.

When the Christian church was destroying temples built to pagan gods like Diana and Apollo, pagan worship turned into witchcraft.

Numerous Witch's Sabbaths are celebrated by these pagans including the most important, the Black Sabbath of Witches, which occurs on October 31st.

Some people, including ardent Christians, oppose the celebration of Halloween on the grounds that it descends from a pagan holiday.

A few even believe that adults who distribute candy are putting themselves at risk because witchcraft practitioners disguised as trick-or-treaters may come to their doors in search of a personal object which they can use to cast a spell.

Black cats, broomsticks, cauldrons and witch's spells, all part of modern day Halloween folklore, descend from this pagan holiday.

Today, however, you are just as likely to run into a Princess Diana or a Monica Lewinsky on Halloween night as you are a ghost or a goblin.

Sharon Chang, a fourth-year English student, recounted her childhood days of trick-or-treating.

"Once I was a bride and wore my grandmother's wedding dress. Other years I was a china doll, a princess and a devil," Chang said.

The third precursor to Halloween was a Roman Catholic Church celebration called All Hallow E'en.

When the Roman Catholic Church was appointing days of the year to various saints, they named November 1st All Saints Day.

All Saints Day was also called All Hallow Mass and the night before was designated All Hallow E'en.

Although the practices of carving pumpkins, dressing up and trick-or-treating stem from both the Celtic harvest festival and the pagan Black Sabbath, Halloween is also recognized by the Roman Catholic church as a day to remember the dead.

Presently, November 1st is celebrated in Mexico and other Latin American countries as El Día de los Muertos, or The Day of the Dead.

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, a Los Angeles resident of Mexican descent, explained that El Día de los Muertos is a time when the older Mexican families visit the cemeteries, covering the graves of deceased loved ones with flowers.

"It's a day to make fun of death. Sometimes they have little candy skeletons with smiley faces and they traditionally have tamales and a sweet bread called pan de muerto," Gomez-Rejon said.

Although few people in the United States visit cemeteries on Halloween, one popular destination for Los Angeles trick-or-treaters is Witch's Landing, a house that was originally built for a movie.

"It's got thatched triangular roofs and a little stream. It's owned by a private resident now, but it was designed to look like a witch's house, so everyone goes there on Halloween," Siegel said.

Another popular Halloween hangout in Los Angeles is Santa Monica Blvd between Doheny and La Cienega, where this year, an expected 200,000 people will listen to live music while parading the streets in wild and crazy costumes.

Chang, who says she feels college students are too old to go trick-or-treating, spent last Halloween at the West Hollywood parade.

"By the time I got there it was so crowded that it took us a couple hours to park and we were cold and uncomfortable in our costumes," Chang said.

LaTray, who gave up trick-or-treating back in the days when one woman gave kids hand-knit mittens instead of candy, said he sees nothing wrong with celebrating a pagan holiday.

"I don't have anything against Halloween," he said, "I'm a pagan too."

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