Halloween History with Chelsey Weber-Smith

Yeah, I do want kids to be out in the dark doing things that will inconvenience me.

Welcome to Your Wrong About.

I am your ghostly hostly, Sarah Marshall, and today we are having a very bootacular Halloween conversation with our friend American Hysteria's Kelsey Weber-Smith.

This episode is on the history of Halloween, the spirit of Halloween, from its pre-Christian origins to our more contemporary fears and our worries about what might be in our children's candy and all the fears in between.

We're talking about haunted houses, we're talking about pranks and mischief, and how adults try to change the way that their children celebrate holidays, and how effective that is or isn't at times.

And just, yeah, what this holiday is to us, what it allows us to do and what we love about it.

So thank you so much for joining us today.

If you also want more Halloween stuff, if you want to hear me and Chelsea talk about another topic over on American Hysteria, there is an episode out now called I Was a Teenage Poltergeist, where I got to come on and tell Chelsea about the Enfield poltergeist, which was in North London in the late 1970s, as well as a little bit of Victorian ghost hunting lore as well.

And we had a lovely time.

And

next week, Monday, October 28th, they will be putting out on the American Hysteria Feed an episode called Buried Alive.

And if you're in the area and if you would like to see even more ghost conversation between me and Chelsea, we would love you to come see us at some of the live shows that we're doing in December and January.

There is an announcement on this very show feed with details about it.

There's an announcement over on American Hysteria.

But just to tell you again, we're doing shows in December and January, December 3rd and 4th in Portland at the Aladdin Theater, December 11th in Seattle at the Moore Theater, January 11th in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater, and January 24th in Los Angeles at the Regent Theater.

We're really, really, really excited to get to come bring in the new year with you, let go of the old one, and to, you know, do something that you're very used to at least hearing us do, talking about history and ghosts and the search to connect with the other side, spiritualism, geeking out about history.

And added to that, we're going to have Parlor Tricks and the music of American Hysteria producer Miranda Zickler's Fleetwood Mac tribute band, The Little Lies,

and perhaps some ghosts.

It's hard to say.

But we just want to bring you kind of a fun,

ghosty variety show.

And if you're able to come, then we'll be so happy to see you.

And if you're not, then we will be astrally projecting it to you the whole time.

And we're just so happy that you're here thinking about Halloween.

hopefully eating some candy.

If you want some bonus episodes, we as always have some on Patreon and Apple Plus subscriptions.

We have last month's episode on Summerton Man with Candace Oper.

It's our most recent.

And we have another bonus coming out later this month on the various adaptations, well two of them, there's actually more than you would think, of the Stepford Wives with Sarah Archer, who is very qualified in the Stepford Wives arena, I would say.

And I had a lovely conversation over there.

I can't wait to share it with you.

And that's it.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for listening to this episode.

Thank you for celebrating Halloween with us in whatever way you observe it or don't.

We're just happy you're here.

Here's your episode.

Welcome to You Wrong About, the house on the block that still gives out popcorn balls and then has the police called on them.

And with me today is Chelsea Weber Smith, the mayor of Halloween Town.

Ah, I wish.

What a great job, right?

Definitely.

Yeah.

But you were one of the friends of the show.

I think your first ever episode with us was on Killer Clowns.

That's right.

And you have stayed on that beat ever since.

And we were talking about having you on for what I think of as at this point our traditional Halloween episode.

And you were like, well, we could, why don't we just do an episode on what Halloween is?

Yeah.

And I love that.

No frills, no gimmicks.

Do you have a podcast, Chelsea?

Allegedly.

Yes, it's called American Hysteria.

And we cover...

moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, crazes, many of the same things that you hear about on your beautiful show, You're Wrong About.

And we kind of just analyze them through a sociological, historical lens and try to understand where our fantastical thinking comes from and where it's taking us.

I love that.

Where is it taking us?

I don't know.

Okay.

That's part of the show.

I don't know.

Yeah, part of the show is trying to figure it out together, you know, because I think,

yeah, what's nice about exploring these questions is that we also get to acknowledge all the stuff that we're so confused about, which just feels like a good way to talk to the world.

Yes.

Yes.

Yep.

And to assert that neither of us know what's going on, despite the even-handed way in which we tell you about world events.

Right.

I know.

The balance is really interesting.

And you're researching, because you've been, you find a lot of very specific topics that let you take these, you know, dig these very narrow and deep rabbit holes through history.

And the one you're researching now that I think will be out by the time this one is, is on

burial artists.

Oh, I thought you were gonna say, I thought you were gonna say skibbity toilet.

Oh, skibbity toilet, yes.

That's well, is that one?

Yeah, that one's very important.

That will be out by the time this is out, yes.

That just shows the breadth of your interest that I had already moved on from skibbity toilet.

From skibbity toilet to being buried alive at American Hysteria, we bring you the topics that you're looking to learn more about.

There you go.

The freshest, the freshest topics in the garden.

And yeah, you showed me Skippity Toilet at my house, and you really won me over personally to the idea that something very interesting and complex is happening.

And then I did have that song in my head for many, many,

many days.

You and me both, babe.

It's been probably two months of this.

It's been quite a year.

Skippity research.

Yeah, it has been quite a year as well.

So, okay, so

let's talk about Skippity Halloween.

Okay, let's do it.

What is Halloween?

We know this is Halloween.

What is this?

Well, this

is a celebration that started as a pagan slam bash every year that kind of celebrated the coming darkness, right?

A typical festival of the dying of the light.

And people are gathering what they need.

And, you know, this is happening like 2,000 years ago.

And specifically, it was a feast of the dead, which, you know, you see in many cultures all over the world.

But this is 2,000 years ago, kind of in modern-day Ireland.

So this is the Celts that are rocking out to this death party.

The Boston Celtics.

Exactly.

Exactly.

A long and storied history.

Yeah.

They've been around longer than people realize.

Yeah, the Celtics.

I know.

So

Solon was like just a big party in honor of death.

You know, it's typical when the veil between those living and those in the other world is lifted and you might be able to like commune with dead friends and relatives and you'll like see magical creatures like demons, ghosts, and your favorite fairies.

I'm not talking about me.

And they, you know, you never know.

You never know.

We're talking bonfires, giant meals, bunch of alcohol.

It's kind of like a little bit like what we think of as Halloween now.

They would like go door to door, dressed in disguises later on in the years.

And it was just a chance to

get drunk and kind of honor death, right?

Which is interesting because now we have, for like, you know, sort of secular American adults, what that makes me think of as sort of, you know, occasions when we get to do that is weddings and tailgating or, you know, football generally, I guess.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's our celebration of death.

You're right.

Tailgating.

Well, we don't, it's interestingly, it feels like the death part is at least below the surface.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's, it's always humming.

Although maybe not as far below the surface as we think.

Right below the skin.

Yeah.

And so, you know, it was like the Romans came in, they conquered the Celtic lands in the first century, blah, blah, blah.

Then the Christians came.

They wanted to erase the pagan holidays.

Chelsea has college lecture.

You got to go to the gym.

Oh, my God.

First century AD.

They're like,

I just want to get to America.

Let's just get to America.

And so,

right, then we get this thing we've all heard of, All Saints Day, All Hallows.

And instead of honoring kind of like the fun dead people, we're honoring the boring dead people, saints and martyrs.

Although, to be fair, I don't find saints boring.

Don't worry.

I will say, and I bet what you're about to say is that saints really aren't boring.

It's just the sort of things we try and get kids to do to honor them are, I would say.

Yeah.

Saints often live very rock and roll lifestyles.

It's true.

Basically, the reason that they created this day where they were honoring saints and martyrs was because they kind of knew that there needed to be one of these like cultural valves that you could pull to like take off pressure and to allow people because they still could have bonfires, they could dress up, they could play games.

I assume they could get drunk, you know, whether or not that was overt or not.

But they associate it with the conquering religion, no.

Right, right, exactly.

I guess, is this like, yeah, we were doing Christianity if these are saints, yes, yeah.

This is definitely like the Christianization, and so they took these elements and then they also added in the fact that like now witches and little devils and you know all these fun more like nymph-like creatures are all just like blanketly evil because of the way that Christianity views the mystical realm or whatever you want to say.

So right, which we talked about in our Conningley fairies episode too, how like it was really, it was about kind of this broad genre of the we folk and how you couldn't you know turn your back on them because they're very tricky and sort of amoral it seems to some extent and then the victorian fairy is like this very ahistorical kind of like reinvention of the fairy type figure that this sort of spirit of subversiveness still somehow finds a way to live inside of is my read.

Yes, no, absolutely.

And it's, it's similar to kind of Satan as well

because, I mean, it's more complicated than I'm making it, but many times in the Bible, when Satan is mentioned, it is not Satan like big capital S.

It's like you are a Satan.

And that translation, you know, can roughly come out to

someone who throws something across one's path.

So it's more like this, this thing you have to get over to find your

faith and to continue to be close to God.

It's less of like this evil, demonic, insane, like snake, lizard possessor.

Right.

Oh, is this why it's get thee behind me, Satan?

Because I've always been confused about that because it seems like, come on, Satan, get thee behind me.

Like my idea.

You know, that's a great question.

I don't know, but that would make sense to me.

Yeah, but it makes more sense if it's like, yeah, the thing in the road that you have to get past.

And in that case, it's like, you know, you're driving home and there's traffic and you're like, get thee behind me, Satan, is like a more

accurate representation of that idea would seem.

Theologians weigh in below.

Yeah.

Shall we enter the great country of America now where Halloween really becomes what we know it as today?

Yes, the only country.

The only country that really matters.

Satire.

We obviously are kidding everyone.

So.

If we don't pretend America is the only country, then the terrorists really do win.

That's true.

So, okay.

Basically, in the beginning of American colonialism, 1600s, 1700s, anything even close to Halloween would have been obviously absolutely banned.

I mean, the Puritans banned Christmas, so they certainly

would have no Halloween.

Which makes sense because Christmas, like sort of roughly medieval Christmas, as far as I know, involves wassailing,

which is effectively what adults should be doing on Halloween now, right?

Because so many adults are bummed that kids don't trick-or-treat on the day or, like, you know, at night in the neighborhood anymore.

And rather than trying to stop time, adults could start going to each other's houses with a big bowl of wine

and drinking from it and singing, you know.

So I feel like

Christmas, you know, from a Puritan perspective, like not to

take their side, but like, I get how it doesn't support their values.

No, sir, it doesn't.

And, you know, it was like very ghost-related too, because, you know, it's a dark, a dark middle of the winter festival.

And yeah, it just, I mean, basically, the Puritans didn't like anything fun, as we, of course, know.

But then that's also not true because they could have sex and they did have sex very out in the open.

And that is a conversation for another time.

There you go.

Let's put a pin in our inevitable Puritans episode.

I'm excited for that.

Yeah.

Or Puritan sex, I think we should do.

Yeah, that's good.

We don't want to try and do all the Puritan stuff all at once.

We don't want to bite off more than we can chew.

All right.

Puritan sex coming, Easter 2025.

Okay, so in the middle of the 1800s, we have this like big wave of immigration, especially from Ireland, as well as Scotland, where Salin was also practiced.

So they brought over the version of Halloween that had kind of been evolving over the years in Ireland.

And that form of Halloween was centered mainly around, do you know, Sarah?

Turnips.

Close.

Pranks.

Ah, that's not close.

Thank you, though.

Well, it may be closer than you realize.

Oh,

okay.

Pranks.

The reason is that in Ireland, boys would carve creepy, spooky faces in turnips to scare away travelers or people that they didn't want hanging around.

And then they would also tie strings to cabbages and pull them through fields to kind of scare people in a very like children of the corn-like manner.

So once the Irish lads came over, they started teaching these pranks to other local boys.

And another one of these pranks was

to

pull up a turnip stalk, light it on fire until it was smoking, and then jam it in the keyhole of a house to make the house just smell terrible, which is

pretty funny, I guess.

Yeah, a little bit classic.

A little scary.

It wasn't on fire.

Yeah, fair enough.

Does that matter?

I don't know.

So it continued to kind of ramp up.

And suddenly there were kind of like these packs of delinquents that were doing things like stringing ropes across sidewalks to trip people who were walking, to trip pedestrians.

Oh.

Yeah.

Not good.

They would coat seats in the chapel with molasses.

Funnier.

They would.

tie doorknobs of opposing houses together, which

is pretty funny to me.

You know, because you're like,

can't get it open.

This is all like infuriating, the most infuriating stuff that they could think of, which I appreciate.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

They would also knock over everything they could find, especially outhouses that were occupied in a very jackassian type of apparently classic comedy because it's been around a long time.

I mean, you know, it's just something we all dread, and therefore it's an ideal prank.

They would also lead livestock onto barn roofs.

Roofs.

Roofs?

How do you do that?

I don't know.

I'm not a farm kid.

I wish I was, but there must be some way to get them up there.

There must be like a little trap door.

You can push them up or something.

It makes sense to me if there's like a hill behind it, right?

Like depending on how level the ground is or like, I don't know, but

it's a great question.

They figured it out.

Yeah, they figured it out.

And I feel like it's very fratty, right?

It's like those, it's like an 80s frat movie where they are pranking the rival school and taking their mascot and putting it on the roof.

And if you do it with a goat, then the goat's like, okay, cool.

So, you know, that's ideal.

Yeah.

Little goat.

Not a giant cow.

Little goat.

Yeah.

Just a little goat.

Just a little goat.

Then they would also just do like stupid, really irritating things.

Like you said, like just tearing up people's crops, not nice.

Seems like that would affect the whole town if you're just tearing up the crops of people who are growing food.

They would smear paint all over houses.

They would explode pipe bombs.

And another very jackass thing they would do is leave dummies on the train tracks to scare conductors.

Which is a plot point in The Good Sun.

So, know,

it didn't work out well in that movie.

But yeah, it's like, I don't know.

These are all pranks where there's like,

you can see how there's different things for different kids with different personalities, and some of them sort of lean more into like harmless mayhem, and some of them lean more toward violence, which is certainly, you know, intriguing when you're a child.

But it also occurs to me that sort of the presence of pranks does sort of suggest like a level of,

if not prosperity, then like some degree of stability, right?

Like, you're not going to destroy people's crops if everybody is starving, I don't think, as a prank.

You would do it as a crime, but not as a prank.

You know, I mean, I don't know.

I'm not sure.

No good question.

Because these were all, you know, mostly Irish immigrant communities.

I mean, it was spreading, and we'll get a little bit more into the spread of this prank culture in a minute.

But, you know, it was at this point mainly, you know, Irish kids who definitely were being, you know, not treated well by the United States, as we know.

So I don't know.

It might just really be like

purge-like boy behavior.

There's a spirit of boyhood, I guess, amongst all of these holidays.

So we have this culture of

mischief that can get into pipe bomb territory, but can also just be be in cabbage territory in communities of boys who are Irish immigrants to the United States.

Right.

Is that a good summary?

That's a great summary.

Love it.

It is, you know, spreading to other boys in America, as you might imagine, white boys in America.

Who are allowed to behave threateningly

to this day?

Yes, exactly.

I mean, it's a very particular brand of, again, like Jackassian behavior that continues into this very day.

And so eventually, October 31st was nicknamed Gate Night.

And that came from the sheer number of gates that were stolen off their hinges because that was like one of the most popular pranks was just steal people's gates.

Yeah.

Not the best.

Not the one you want your holiday named after.

And then make a giant cooling rack.

Yeah.

That's what you would do with all your gates.

Yeah.

And then make the biggest loaf of bread in the world.

Where and when was this, approximately?

So, this is, I think, gate night is like late 1800s, and it's also in Canada.

These things are also happening in Canada.

Is this kind of like in the northeast or sort of more like urban centers?

Yeah, I think the northeast is probably, if we think about kind of the patterns of Irish and Scottish immigration, I would say that that makes the most sense, right?

Cool.

So, as you mentioned a little bit, like the community

accepted gate night.

Like, it was nobody's favorite thing, but it was like, okay, again, it's like the purge where they're like,

you get this one night, get it all out of your system.

It's kind of in this controlled manner.

And at least we know like when it's going to happen and at least kind of what's going to happen.

So, like, get it all out tonight so that the rest of the year you can act right.

Yeah.

which is familiar.

You know, that feels contemporary.

And it also, yeah, this, I don't know, this conversation is making me think about how,

because I think you and I have maybe talked about this before, but how sort of part of true crime as an interest is that, like, to be reading and enjoying true crime for many people to some extent, or, you know, to be watching it or listening to it, is to be telling yourself on some level that you're not in a true crime story, you know, and that what you're encountering has entertainment value because it's not too close to enjoy.

Right.

And you can kind of remind yourself that way that things are not that bad.

You know, not everybody, not all the time, but I think that's part of it.

And I think, you know, and then in the past, it's also been a marker of identity because in sort of, you know,

because in 19th century Britain, you know, there is this anxiety, sort of again, a Victorian anxiety, that the working classes would be corrupted by true crime and would become criminals and the idea that if you're, you know, of the working class, then you're right on the bubble and you could go either way.

But if you're in, you know, if you're a member of the upper class to some extent or the aristocracy, then you are incorruptible, you know, which didn't really play out, but it's a nice idea.

And this thing of, you know, true crime is a thing that sort of shows what category of identity you're in, if you're middle class or

you know, higher than that, because you're showing that you're allowed to enjoy something that can't corrupt you because you're sort of demographically safe from its corruptibility.

And I feel like the idea of mischief is also, you know, like clearly a marker of race and class in America because to do mischief is to be on the right side of the law every other day of the year.

Oh, wow.

And to sort of be announcing to yourself and your family what category of being you're in.

So they're, you know, like whiteness and Halloween

live together.

Yeah.

Well said.

Well said.

And, you know, as the turn of the century is happening, we're starting to see like more costumes.

And these are handmade costumes made out of sheets and things you make masks out of, you know, makeup.

But the whole point was to be completely unrecognizable.

And I'm sure you've seen like some photos of early Halloween costumes, right?

Yes, but I can't really picture any.

So I think we should probably look at some pictures to jog our memories.

Google along with us, folks.

Early Halloween costumes.

What are you seeing, Sarah?

Oh, yeah.

You know, kids in big sort of, like the kind of expressionless humanoid masks that would end up in horror movies.

Yes, absolutely.

You know what it really looks like to me is like the puppets from Mr.

Rogers' neighborhood.

Yes.

Like Lady Elaine's face on a human body.

Yes.

So that's what, yeah, that's what we're looking at now.

Right.

They're like, like raggedy, shaggy, very homemade, like a lot of yarn.

I'm looking at a photo of just like a life-size raggedy ann type person, you know, with like,

and like a lot of the things that have been, I think, that are, because this is, you know, in the sort of golden age of listicles on the internet, like 10 years ago, I feel like it was a very classic Halloween content thing to be like, these 27 photos of people in old-time Halloween costumes will make you wish you had never been born or whatever.

Yeah, that's

gotta hire her.

Buzzfeed, are you listening?

I don't know if they can hear anymore.

I think it just has a lot to do with the Uncanny Valley when I'm looking at this stuff.

Cause it's like, you know, a lot of the faces of these masks, which I imagine were made out of like paper mache

or maybe like even like animal skin.

I don't know.

I mean, and some of them I think are mask manufactured, but like, you know, if you're looking at stuff from the early 20th century, kind of before World War II and the advent advent of all these plastics that we have and everything now, it's like a lot of old clothes and like rags and potato sacks getting pulled up as far as I can tell.

Yeah, definitely.

But they're much creepier than pretty much any costume that I ever see now.

So

hats off to them for that.

So yeah.

Now we've got kind of costumes in the mix as well.

And at this point, these

rural areas, because that is one thing I'll say about where these things are happening.

It was mainly in rural communities that these big pranks were happening, which is kind of obvious based on all of the different pranks that I've told you about.

But as the century turned and cities were growing larger and larger, these pranks kind of skipped over into the big city and then like cranked the fuck up.

So if you think it's been bad so far, it's only going to get worse.

All right.

Oh, no.

Don't worry, Sarah.

It's all over now.

I mean, for the most part.

Halloween's dead, baby.

Buried the lead.

Wow.

So, you know, these kids and teenagers would go into buildings and pull fire alarms.

They would

throw bricks through store windows.

They would paint like swear words, and I'm imagining slurs on people's houses.

They'd light small fires that sometimes turned into big fires.

And if you were out on Halloween night, which like adults were kind of like, again, I just cannot push the point enough that it was like the purge.

It was like if you were an adult and you were out on Halloween, you were fair game and you could get jumped and they'd be like, give us treats.

Give us, you know, I don't know, what kind of treats did they have back then, Sarah?

Necko wafers.

There you go.

Give me all your necks.

Necko wafers.

You know,

as we're getting, now we're like into the 20s.

Okay.

So here are three incidents that were recorded to have happened in the 20s and 30s in prank land.

So in 1929, a like wild pack of boys planted and then detonated dynamite on their high school campus and caused a huge amount of damage to the building.

Is that a prank?

I don't know.

I feel like we're moving out of prank territory, aren't we?

Yeah.

In 1932,

a man almost lost his eyes when a teenager just blasted him in the face with a rock.

So people are just getting rocks just, and I mean, like, thrown as hard as you can at, like, you see an adult, help them with rocks is the norm for those participating, which of course was not every child and teenager out there, but you know, enough that this was an ongoing, like, big-time problem, okay?

Yeah.

And I know we're talking about this so far as like part of the culture of boyhood, but it also occurs to me that like part of the appeal of wearing a Halloween costume is that for potentially the only night of the year, your gender is up for grabs.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

But this was such a boy thing.

One of the things that happened was in 1939, a little girl almost had to have her entire arm amputated because a boy kept hitting her with rocks.

Wow.

Yeah.

And it's like just gate night shenanigans, right?

Yeah.

Wow.

I feel like, I don't know, there's like a bunch, I feel like there's various things laid over top of each other, right?

Because on the one hand, I believe in like young people's right to sort of like do potentially destructive but not harmful things or annoying things.

But on the other hand, this is also like

it feels like we have in here too this threat of just like

let adolescent boys

wound people.

And

if you if yeah, if you give them a purge night, then yeah, the social contract is upheld.

Yeah.

Shouldn't have been out and about, little girl.

I mean, yes.

And

you would be in agreement, not exactly, as we'll see, but with the adults of the time.

Because now we're getting into like the 30s and 40s, and the tolerance for this type of thing is starting to definitely go down.

But instead of a, you know,

a constructive means.

Adults were arming themselves with rifles and going out into the night.

And if they saw teenagers doing anything, they would threaten to kill them or they would fire their guns in the general direction of the teenagers to scare them hopefully but i don't have the details of those shootings so i'm not quite sure the history of halloween is more about like a war between children and adults than i realize oh and it's gonna continue to be this very thing so yeah also not to be too simplistic but i i feel like there has to be an element of like we are having a great depression and our tempers are short.

Yep.

You are right on the money, babe.

So

they were like, yo, we have been tolerating this boys will be boys night for decades now, and it's only gotten worse.

It's only ramped up to a point that is totally unacceptable and intolerable during a Great Depression, first of all, and then eventually during World War II, which we know this type of behavior was like like certainly not going to fly during a major world war that we were, you know, saving scrap metal for.

So it's like we didn't have the resources to deal with this type of

just malaria, property damage, and death and destruction.

You know, I mean, people did die from these pranks, like on roadways.

Like, again, like with the dummy stuff.

Blow up a building.

I mean, right.

I mean, my God.

It makes sense that socially this would feel a lot less permissible during a time of war when people are feeling under threat and like existentially afraid, you know, for the future of their lives and their country and their family than, you know, during a time of relative peace and prosperity, you know.

Exactly.

And yeah, by this time, it's like millions of dollars of damages were being accrued

each gate night, Halloween night, whatever you want to call it.

And so this is the moment where kind of the war on Halloween officially begins.

Oh.

We're in, you know, the wartime years, and the first people to take action to try to quell Halloween was the Chicago City Council.

And they wanted to ban it completely and replace it with Conservation Day.

Oh, come on.

I mean, come on.

What does that involve?

You're supposed to be saving a wounded loon.

I I cannot for the life of me figure out what Conservation Day meant to them.

I have tried really hard.

It's doing whatever the opposite of setting a building on fire is.

It's conserving a building, helping it be less on fire.

Yeah, and I'm guessing since this was like the 40s that they didn't mean environmental conservation and they meant more like...

conserving resources or conserving.

I don't know.

I really don't know.

But whatever it is, it sounds like it sucks.

Yes, that's not a good substitute holiday.

Like they need to replace it with something that is not committing crimes, but is almost as fun for teenagers, like making out day.

Yeah.

Although I can see why some people might not like that.

And I mean, we can think of kind of what it was when the

Catholic Church or the, you know, the Christians of the land took Sawwin and turned it into All Saints Day, right?

So it was like this way of like, you still get to have your little party, but we're going to kind of reorganize it tamper it down so that it's acceptable to our cultural moment right yeah huh luckily the mayor did not enact the policy so halloween continued to live at that point

in chicago yes

chicago the city that tried to cancel halloween then in 1950 president truman got involved on this halloween war and he tried to officially officially turn Halloween into the only thing worse than Conservation Day, youth honor day.

What?

What's that?

It was just about spending the day instilling moral virtue in teenagers.

Oh no.

Oh, Truman.

Which is not

a good replacement for Halloween.

No, these are very bad.

So this was like a pressing enough concern that at some point in his tenure, President Truman was like, what will we do about Halloween?

Yes.

Yes.

See, I didn't see that one coming.

It was a huge deal.

Understandably, I would also be afraid.

I mean, I don't leave the house on Halloween anyway, but that's because I'm watching movies the whole time.

Yes,

that's nice.

I try to leave on Halloween, but maybe I shouldn't.

Not in the 1940s, no.

But like right around the time this was happening, the Korean War kind of eclipsed the controversy and the House of Representatives moved on to more important issues and just tossed his motion aside.

Okay.

So Halloween continued to live.

Whose motion was it?

Was it the Trumans?

Okay.

Wow.

All the way to the top.

They're like, the war on Halloween has to wait.

There's a bigger war afoot.

Yes, exactly.

So with the government failing them as usual, it was up to suburban parents to take matters into their own hands.

The most terrifying thing of all.

Yeah.

A suburban mom.

So they kind of took youth honor day.

They tried to implement that in the smaller communities.

For example, Ocala, I think it's pronounced.

Sorry if it's something else in Florida.

Their chapter of the Moose Lodge through a big youth honor party, which was complete with a king and queen of youth honor and a little parade in honor of their honor.

I appreciate what they're doing because youth honor is the worst,

just the dorkiest thing to call something.

They have to know they can't.

Come on.

It just seems like you're asking for the teenagers with less than adequate supervision to burn down your moose lodge.

Yes.

And yeah, I mean, there were dorks out there that were like, I like Youth Honor Day.

But for the most part,

you know, teenagers were not about to trade Halloween for Youth Honor Day.

You know, fair enough.

Fair enough.

Teenagers are hard to trick.

They are.

But

the suburban parents were like, Time to use reverse psychology to trick these kids.

Oh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

So they were like, Look, we know Youth Honor Day is not working.

So we're going to need to create a milder Halloween.

We're going to have to like beat them at their own game, right?

So each house started decorating their basement in different spooky themes.

So every like participating house on the block would have a basement for these teens to kind of hop to one by one and get like a spooky, creepy experience, which I think sounds so awesome.

Can you imagine if we did that?

They'd never let us now, but so it's kind of like everybody lends one room of their house to be a haunted house and you're like, it's, it's communist, Kelsey.

We could never do it today.

And yet it was kind of a conservative movement, you know?

I mean, I can't say conservative.

I don't say conservative, like conservative versus liberal, but like it was, you know, it was like a way to try to control an unruly counterculture.

Yeah, totally.

And, you know, better than Youth Honor Day because it's like, yeah, it feels like they're like, okay,

we get what you want.

You want to be scared and we want you to be scared.

We just don't want to also be scared for our lives.

Yes, yes, exactly.

Exactly.

But it's like recognizing the holiday is about fear and like finding a way to make it a soft play area, it seems like.

Precisely.

So here's like an example, which I love of a few sentences from from an instructional party pamphlet that was passed around between parents as a way to create kind of like a frightening experience on a budget.

So,

quote, hang old furs, strips of raw liver on walls.

Regular old household furs?

I guess so.

Where one feels his way to dark steps.

Weird moans and howls come from dark dark corners.

Damp sponges and hair nets hang from the ceiling to touch his face.

A guard dressed as a dog suddenly jumps out at him, barking and growling.

First of all, huge waste of liver.

My God.

My God, I know.

Liver's hard to come by.

Well, I guess liver is relatively cheap.

I don't know, but like it's.

I do love that they were like, we got to tone it down.

We got to start nailing meat to our walls.

God, I have like this just like very vivid and lovely, comforting memory of being a kid and going to this haunted house that, you know, had the classic, like, put your hand in here and it's spaghetti, but it's intestines.

And like, put your hand in here and it's grapes, but it's really eyeballs.

And like, it's just,

you know, there's something about that that although I don't, you know,

support the liver industry, I think it is like cool that there was this like DIY haunted house industry that was happening that would then kind of transform into what we know today.

Yeah, I think it's nice whenever people cooperate to do something together, you know, it's because it's great.

Like we always need more of it, I think.

I agree.

And, you know, I don't know exactly what it was, if it was just these like little parties or what, what, but the pranks got, you know, the pranks got much, much tamer.

And Halloween became more of this like parent-sanctioned evening.

Do you think adults ruined Halloween by like taking over it?

I mean, I mean, not ruined it, but like ruined it for scary teenagers.

I mean, yeah, I think they ruined it for teenagers that wanted to like throw a dummy on a car.

But I think naturally this type of behavior started to wane in like the 50s and 60s because we had a much more like gee golly scenario happening.

And,

you know, I mean, it's not like the pranks died out because it's like, I remember TPing.

I was trying to TP the house of like this really mean girl.

And we couldn't get to her house because she was like mega rich and had this giant fence around her house.

So we just TP'd this tree outside of the fence.

I don't even know if it would have like registered as her tree.

You know, but it's like, we were still doing pranks like

in the 90s.

I mean, I guess this was even the early 2000s.

They're still happening now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They kind of happen at least a little bit.

So like the spirit, I mean, I can't say now because everything is so weird now.

But, you know, through the 90s and 2000s, we still had.

There were eggings.

There was the like trick if you don't give the treat.

Although I always feel like that didn't, I never remember someone being like, Oh, you didn't, you don't have candy.

Well, I'm gonna egg your house.

It felt more targeted than that about who was getting egged.

But you know, what occurs to me too is that there is like such a thing, you know, for Americans of like, when are kids too old to trick-or-treat, right?

No, that's a great point.

And I will say, like, two Halloweens ago, we were living in a house where we would get like

five trick-or-treaters a night, you know, like very few.

And the last two of the night knocked on our door.

It's like 9:30, which is like a jarring time to have someone trick-or-treat at your house when it's all children.

And I opened the door and it was like these two people who I swear to you, I think were 19.

And they just looked at me and opened their backpacks.

Did not say trick-or-treat.

And I just was like, here you go.

I have never gotten trick-or-treaters.

I I don't think I've ever lived in a place as an adult where I've gotten trick-or-treaters.

You know, these, I don't know, holidays sort of like shift around and sort of, I guess, find the thing that they need to be for the community or the culture that's having them based on what else is going on.

But it feels like this is, you know, the holiday season, right?

Because summer ends and it's back to school.

And then we have like, you know, it's like this luge that goes from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year's.

And then we just kind of, and then the holidays abandon us, and we have three more months of winter to get through somehow.

Which is, I think we should space everything out more

is what I think.

But what purpose do you think, you know, the way we do,

I'll throw Thanksgiving in there too.

You can take it or leave it.

But the sort of the Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas thing in modern America.

What's it about?

I mean, I would think that it's just ancient parties about the harvest and the darkness and rituals to like pray to the sun god to return, right?

Or like pray that the crops take us through the winter or like, I think it all has to do with like the dying of the light again, like the like rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Yeah, and that's Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, I guess.

I mean,

you know, that's what it just comes to mind.

And you just don't need parties as much in the summer, or let's say an excuse to like community party.

People don't need to be forced to have parties.

Yeah.

People just have parties all on their own.

That's what, yeah.

So I think that's, I think it's like all harvest all the time, is what our holidays kind of all go back to.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

And then, of course, we have, well, we have Black Friday, and that's one of our harvest.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And then we see who will have to keep his appointment with the Wicker Man.

There probably is some like crazy pagan equivalent to Black Friday that I'll stumble upon one day and be telling you on this very podcast.

Right.

So now we're in 1969.

Are you ready to come back along with me?

I'm ready.

Walt Disney opens the haunted mansion in Disneyland, which was modeled after the dark rides of carnivals that had been around since the 1800s.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

And for people who don't know, a dark ride is just like:

A, it's literally dark, but B, it's like the ride can control the lighting.

So what you see is controlled because it's a totally artificial environment.

And also, it is generally like you are in some sort of cart or boat.

You know, you're not walking through it as much, you're in some kind of a seat.

Yeah.

So that kind of like sparked this haunted house revolution in America.

So we had kind of the combination of these cute neighborhood haunts and the idea that they could be bigger and that they could be independent of this neighborhood structure.

So the first haunted houses as we know them today were created for charity by the United States Junior Chamber, also known as the JCs,

which I believe are still around today.

I don't know.

I have some of their old cookbooks.

So thank you.

You would.

So they were like a non-profit personal development business leadership club, and they also did community service.

And let me give you a list.

This is a total aside of former members of the JCs.

Are you ready?

I'm ready.

Tipper Gore.

Close.

Al Gore is on the list.

Bill Clinton, Elvis Presley, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Howard Hughes, Charles Lindbergh, Al Gore, Bill Gates, Larry Bird, and, of course, Sarah, serial killers John Wayne Gacy and Edmund Kemper.

Edmund Kemper.

Yeah.

You just don't think of him as being one of the more civically oriented serial killers, you know.

No, I wouldn't have expected him.

John Wayne Gacy, I feel like that's on brand.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very into charity work, as we know.

So they would just take over a location, often a park field, sometimes even an abandoned building, And they would transform them and create their own original sets and their own practical effects.

And they'd use makeup and costuming to transform their volunteers into monsters, ghouls, devils, witches, all the scary stuff.

But they removed the element of the vehicle that you have in dark rides.

So patrons just started walking through these buildings that were turned into haunted houses.

Yeah, wow.

Yeah.

And so these were like all over the country.

It was very popular.

It was like the JCs did this every year.

And it was kind of like part of the Halloween culture.

Like you'd be like, we're going to the JC haunt this year.

And you can still see that.

I mean, my favorite haunted house in all of Washington state, and believe me, I've been to most of them, is run by the Shriners at a golf course outside of shoreline, Washington called the Nile.

And I highly recommend going there.

It's like a series of buildings.

So you like also also walk through the woods, and each building has its own like creepy theme.

It's great.

So the charity haunts, kind of by the 70s, famously a more transgressive decade, started to lose their edge.

Okay.

And

this 24-year-old school teacher and former theater kid, an absolute icon from Maryland named Itsy Atkins was like, I can do better than this.

And he was like, I can go harder than this.

I love it.

He was like, let's go.

I need a location.

We're going to do this.

I need something sick and cheap.

So he found an abandoned nunnery in the small rural town of Ridge, Maryland.

Nice.

It was.

crumbling.

It was like

molding and like dank and dark and obviously dangerous, most likely.

But it was the 70s, so you could just kind of do whatever you wanted.

Nothing like an abandoned nunnery.

Then he teamed up with this other haunted house aficionado named Skip Smith.

So now we have Itzy and Skip.

It'sy, Skipsy.

Yeah.

So they got their funding from the county after they agreed for their first year to have all the proceeds go to the Parks Department.

And that's when they named their haunted house the best name for a haunted house I've ever heard.

Blood Manor.

Oh, yeah.

What, as an aficionado?

Yes.

How do I make a good scary haunted house the way Kelsey Weber Smith, who has been to dozens, if not hundreds of haunted houses would recommend?

What's a good haunted house involve?

Detail.

It's all about the detail because it's real easy to throw up some like black fabric on some plywood walls and like put a teenager in a mask around every corner.

But like you have to get the ambiance.

You have to go into a room.

You have to build your set.

You have to like spend the time.

And it makes a huge difference.

And you just have to get the detail and you have to just really try.

And if you try, I think that you'll get there.

A lot of people don't want to try in this world.

I know.

There's no substitute for trying.

No one wants to work anymore.

And there is like, I think that the screaming is really important, you know?

Like, I think we all need to scream in October.

I can't help it.

Another good valve, pressure valve, is the scream.

Right.

If you're screaming on purpose, which I sometimes do if I want to make people feel good and not make them think they didn't scare me, then I'll do a courtesy scream.

Of course.

But like, yeah, like a real scream.

I don't want to hurt their feelings.

No.

But a real scream that just like rips out of you is like,

it feels like it's scooping up like tension that you've been storing up for like weeks to months and just like, I don't know, lifting it out of you.

Yes.

Somehow.

Yes, definitely.

So the modern haunted house is underway.

Yeah, it's like fully underway.

And, you know, this is like the first time where it was like a test of endurance to get through it, right?

Where it's like,

you know, it was like a test of courage.

We've come back around to where we started, right?

It's like it became this tame thing for the kids.

And now it's like, can you handle Halloween?

Yes, exactly.

And, you know, they would like

have all of this theatrical gore because, of course, these were like theater kids.

So they were, you know, they knew how to, how to set a scene.

Ipsy and flipsy, yeah.

Really, they invented like the classics, like the operating table room where the like blood-covered surgeon is working on a dummy, you know.

And that is a classic.

And they

also are the ones that invented the chainsaw in the haunted house.

So that's been since the very beginning.

And he just took the chain off and still used the gas-powered chainsaw, which they don't do anymore, which is a huge mistake because you don't smell the gas fumes.

So they're just like electric.

You need to smell the gas fumes.

And they would even put fake blood into the oil tank that would like spray everybody

while they were running with the chainsaw.

That's great.

Yep.

And it would eventually be dubbed by a British tabloid the sickest show in America.

Oh, come on.

It was.

Which it was.

I don't know.

Well, you're using sick in a complimentary way.

But I will say that they did a couple things that were maybe a bit problematic in that they had a son of Sam storyline.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Coming out, Sarah, before he was even caught.

So it's like, if you remember the son of Sam murders, it was like, you know, it was like a panic.

Like 13 months, I think, yeah, of people not knowing.

Yeah.

Or knowing that there was, that there was a

killer at large, but not knowing who it was.

But then they also, which I feel is a little more sensitive to your show,

they did a whole scene of the South American rugby players of Flight 571

eating each other.

Yeah.

And also it's like, look, I wouldn't do that.

You wouldn't do that.

If we walked into a haunted house where they were doing that, we'd be like, ooh.

But like, I also, I don't want to be like a total marm and act like that isn't the kind of thing a 24-year-old kind of subversive like horror industry type theater kid would do.

You know, where it's like, it's like, oh.

It's callous, but like, that's also,

I don't want to like too roundly condemn the way that people, you know, sometimes process scary stuff callously, especially when it's still going on.

Yeah.

It would really put a dent in my haunted house enjoyment, but I also am not under the illusion that everyone throughout history has always been particularly mature.

No, I mean, Halloween is probably our most transgressive holiday.

You know, I once dressed up as gay L.

Ron Hubbard.

That can arguably be construed as offensive,

perhaps perhaps in poor taste, but I think I looked pretty good.

But right, so it's it's kind of we're coming back around to like anything goes, it seems like.

Yes, because it's the 70s and anything kind of did go.

So Blood Manor was doing great, but then, you know, places like Knottsberry Farm started doing Not Scary Farm

and

the indie haunts started to kind of face trouble, especially when, and I don't know if you've ever talked about this on the show or know about it, but at a New Jersey Six Flags haunted house called the Haunted Castle, 29 people got trapped inside

this haunt that caught on fire and eight teenagers died in the fire.

And so that made like lawmakers all over the country create these like very intense safety laws, building codes, all of that type of stuff for commercial and charity haunts, which just meant that it was much more expensive and much harder to have that kind of haunted house.

And business kind of started to win out.

Yeah, which is good for the health of the teenagers, but general.

Yeah, good to have codes.

Bad to ruin charity haunts.

Yeah.

So

now

we're moving into like a very important time in Halloween history

and kind of what we could say killed Halloween as we know it.

Though, of course, it continued on, but never with the same vibe that it had in the 1970s.

And that was

the

poison Halloween candy incident from 1974.

Have you talked about this on the show?

What do you know about this, Sarah?

So we talked, I think in our first ever Halloween episode when Mike and I, the year we started the show in 2018, I think we did like an urban legend the spectacular where one of the things we talked about was, I think the myth we were trying to get behind was the razor blade and the apple, which I know is, you know, that's your show iconography or some of it.

And one of the things we talked about was basically, yeah, the sort of the fear of tampered with candy taking over and being connected to.

kind of, I think like a typical thing that happens when there's a panic where it's connected to some actual incident that isn't the thing people are saying is happening everywhere now, but is sort of close enough that you can see how people got there.

Exactly.

And what you're talking about is what I think it is, that it's a case where a child did consume poisoned Halloween candy, but didn't get it from a stranger.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

Yeah.

And tell us what happened.

Okay.

So on Halloween night, in 1974, so happening kind of concurrently with the rise of Blood Manor,

an eight-year-old boy named Timothy O'Brien was looking at all of the candy that he had accrued while trick-or-treating.

Very relatable.

This is my main Halloween memory, spreading out the candy and counting the candy and thinking about the candy.

Yeah.

Sorting the candy.

Yes.

But on this day, his father, Ronald O'Brien, let Timothy have one piece of candy.

He was like, you're going to have one piece of candy tonight.

And he let him have a one of those giant pixie sticks, 21 inches long.

You remember those?

I think so.

Yeah, his dad helped him get it open.

It appeared to have been like stapled shut, which was weird, but it was the 70s.

So it was kind of like people were still handing out, as you said, like in the beginning, popcorn balls,

apples, you know, caramelized apples, whatever.

Like it was very, you know, you could get candy because they'd started obviously manufacturing candy, but it was still totally okay to to pass out unwrapped candy to kids or unwrapped treats, toothbrushes, if you're a monster, but uh, or a dentist.

It still happens, but yeah, it used to be normal.

And now it's the kind of thing that, you know, if I were handing out homemade treats to kids in my neighborhood, I would just

sit down and wait for the police to show up.

You know, I was going to say you'd be arrested on site.

Yeah.

You just look at your watch and you wait for them to come take you away.

Yeah.

Yep.

yep so

timothy like started to eat it and complained that it tasted bitter and his father got him a glass of kool-aid and he drank it he climbed into bed closed his eyes and an hour later timothy o'brien died

very very sad yeah so they took him to the hospital you know and they took him in to see what could have possibly happened.

And they realized because they could smell almonds coming from his mouth that he'd been killed by cyanide.

Oh my god.

Yes.

Yes.

I don't want to harp on this, but that's if you want to

if there are less cruel poisons to use on people.

Yeah.

Ideally don't poison anybody at all.

It's never a good idea, but it's

that's really horrifying.

I know.

It's really horrifying.

You know, the father, Ronald, told the police, like, hey, the only thing my my kid ate was this pixie stick and sure enough they tested the pixie stick and there was cyanide in it and as soon as the community learned about this and the cops kind of announced what was going on there was like a huge panic which makes perfect sense because nobody knew what was going on and parents just started to think, well, if this happened to Timothy, it could definitely happen to my kid.

And so, of course, all the candy was taken away and it just continued on.

And the news was reporting on this.

And it was a huge story, of course, like a massive story.

Where was this?

It was in Deer Park, Texas.

Okay.

At this point, the story was that someone in the community had given him this poisoned Halloween candy, right?

However, From the very beginning, authorities were suspicious of Ronald.

First of all, because he was just acting really weird.

He was raging at his family members because

he was going to perform an original song on TV about Jesus taking his son home.

And he

seemed to care more about that than, you know, the death of his son.

And he refused to look at his son during the funeral and just was kind of acting like very aloof about the whole thing.

Yeah.

And this one is, it's interesting too, right?

Because it's like people respond weirdly to grief.

And like, often you look at cases of people who were wrongly accused of something and, you know, it comes up that like they didn't grieve right, you know?

Yeah.

And yet at the same time, like sometimes someone is just behaving really weirdly and you're like, hey.

Yeah.

But that is weird though.

It's weird.

It's weird.

Yeah.

So the police, you know, we're still going to check out his story, which was that he got this pixie stick from a particular house, but that he could not remember which house.

She, and this is a perfect example for kind of what Ronald O'Brien was doing with the police because they were driving around in circles.

He kept being like, one more block and I'll remember the house, right?

Never do this if you're caught in an elaborate lie.

No, never.

And in the Casey Anthony case, who Casey Anthony was accused of and likely did kill her own daughter, Kaylee.

Yeah, and she was acquitted.

And it was, I think, the most outraged people had felt over an acquittal since OJ Simpson.

Definitely.

Yeah.

Easy.

Easy.

I think.

Yeah.

But when her lies were kind of unwinding, but at one point, the cops were like, okay, we need to come to your work and we need to start doing interviews with people that you work with.

And so she had told them that she worked at Universal Studios.

And so they were like, okay, well, take us us to your office.

So they went to this office building that was a Universal Studios office.

She walked in and they walked right past the desk and they were all like, what's going on?

You know, there's just this woman leading a bunch of cops and they go down this long hall of offices and she keeps just being like, it's right up here.

Oh, it's just around this corner.

We're almost there.

And then at the end, she got to the dead end of the hallway, turned around and looked at the cops and said, I don't really work here.

Oh, my God.

I just think about it so much.

Yeah.

It encapsulates something that people really do and a thing that just happens a lot where you're like, I'm.

I can make it.

I can make it.

I can make it make it.

I can make it.

I can't make it.

Wild.

Like, what was she thinking?

Did she just think there's

an office?

There'll be an office.

Like, of course there'll be one.

Right.

Like, there were just at a certain point, there would be an office with no nameplate on it, or we're just going to say KCA, and she'd be like, Well, there it is, KCA.

I knew it would

pan out.

Yeah, I think it's like, I mean, these are, you know, these two cases are like, these involve the horrible death of a child.

These are two of the worst things we can imagine.

And I think finding like the ability to just sort of like lightly make fun of somebody at the center of it just feels like a little security blanket against the cold.

Yeah, and make fun of the perpetrator.

The alleged perpetrator, Chelsea.

We don't want to get sued, but you know, yeah.

Yeah, no, allegedly.

Allegedly.

So

back to the proto Casey Anthony Ronald O'Brien.

He was driving around with these cops and they just started being like, where's the house?

And he, you know, the pressure was kind of on him.

So eventually he just like saw a house.

Oh my God.

It was like, you know, a house that conveniently had no porch light.

It was just dark.

And he was like, there it is, boys.

There it is.

Yeah.

It's Bert Harbinson.

Yes, exactly.

It's Art Core Valais.

Art Porgenson.

Art Corp Valley.

Yeah, exactly.

Then he told them the story that he had told them a bunch of times.

He'd been out trick-or-treating with his two kids, and his friend and his friend's son.

They had knocked on this door.

No one answered.

And the others continued down the block with Ronald and his son, Timothy, trailing behind.

So the conveniently no witnesses.

So then only Ronald noticed, and I just cannot believe this story.

He says that he noticed and heard the door creak open just barely.

And then from inside the dark house, a single hairy arm just like

stuck its way through the door with a fist full of pixie sticks.

That is insultingly bad lying and also bad parenting, if that's the story you want to tell.

Yeah.

And so he like grabbed the pixie sticks and then, you know, the man's arm just like went back in, the door closed and he was like, I never saw his face.

Got my candy from the scary arm like we do every year.

Stunningly stupid.

And of course, the cops were like, no, that didn't.

They were like, well, Keith,

case closed.

Yeah.

Looks like it's another case of the scary arm man, you know?

Yeah.

It happens every year.

Yeah.

It's nice when there's a case where like,

yeah, the

police involved are just like, absolutely not about an obvious lie.

It's, it's very, it's, it's fun to observe from time to time.

Yes, it is nice when that sometimes happens.

But they also became pretty sure that he was guilty when not only did they figure out that this man who lived at this house had been at work with 200 people vouching for him being there,

But the cops figured out that Ronald had taken out insurance policies on all of his kids

and it totaled around 100 grand.

And in the 70s, I don't know what that is, but it's more.

What kind of earning potential does a child have that you can take out that size of a policy on them?

I know.

I was thinking that as well.

It's very,

it's odd.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Even to just really top off how twisted this guy was, he had also given another poison pixie stick to his friend's son to try to cover his tracks.

Oh, is he going to accuse the friend, or is he going to say, look, we both got hit by the hairy arm killer?

I think he was going to say the second one.

Okay.

But I don't know if we really know that.

But yes, it was trying to basically be like both of these kids were poisoned by some random poisoner.

And was that afterwards or was it simultaneously?

It was simultaneously.

It was.

Oh my God.

I mean, not that one is better than the other, but.

No, but it's so premeditated.

And I mean, obviously, but it's just so like he really thought it through.

But luckily,

the parents heard about what happened and they had not given that piece of candy to the child.

So he was okay.

Can you imagine like you have like the bucket is on top of the fridge or wherever you keep it and it's like sitting there like a time bomb waiting to be consumed and it's just like mere luck that has kept that from happening.

So lots of evidence obviously had piled up against Ronald O'Brien who would go on to be known as the candyman.

Yeah, he's yet another one of our mastermind criminals who only got as far as thinking things through without any consideration for human life or, you know, love or anything, but then was a complete fucking idiot once the chips were down, which is

really a very common type, as far as I can tell.

Yeah, much more common than the mastermind serial killer.

Yeah.

And once again, I would like to put forth that an inability to value human life does not make a person smarter.

It makes them stupider and clearly sometimes very bad at lying.

He

eventually died by electric chair 10 years after the trial.

Oh, wow.

And this was like a massive story, right?

It was huge.

Yes.

What happened with this, right, is up to this very day.

I mean, just last year, we had a massive like drugs in candy scare.

I think it was Mexican gangs are putting fentanyl in candy, right?

The point of the story, the fact that it was not a random poisoner.

It was someone intimately connected to the person who died as well as the person who almost died.

That part of the story was, of course, totally forgotten in the sensationalism of everything.

And I just think over time, I don't know exactly how it happened, but over time, it just became like this happens.

Like this is a common occurrence every year.

I mean, you remember this from childhood?

It was like your parents had to look at all your candy.

They used to take it to get x-rayed.

That was a whole thing because it was like razor blades and nails and all this stuff was supposed to be in candy.

And, you know, I mean, it's by and large an urban legend to this day.

Like it, there are not instances of anyone dying from a random psychopath.

Every so often there is, you know, like somebody finds like a pin or something, but it seems often to be like, you know, somebody pretends to have found something because it's like kind of a cultural meme.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But then also, yeah, the sort of other aspects of ostention where it's like, it's something that is on people's minds so much that any indication of the possibility of candy being tampered with in any way just sort of people are ready to, you know, to, if they see anything slightly out of order, to assume the worst, basically.

Yeah.

You know, I think that that mixed with this story of the candyman, yeah, they like melded into this tale, you know, and then you've got the 80s, we've got the satanic panic, we've got all of this dangerous, these dangerous satanists that are coming after your kid, but where are they?

I don't know.

I can't find them, but they're out there.

It's kind of the same thing.

It's like, right.

Halloween got into this time of urban legend and moral panic.

And it really became, and why wouldn't it, right?

It's like the night of darkness and death and the night when kids dress up like devils and witches and all that kind of stuff.

Like it makes sense that that was the time where the idea of Halloween became even more dangerous.

And, you know, that's kind of, I think, think, where we kind of enter the picture in the 90s as kids.

And, you know, we're door to door.

We're with our parents.

Our candy's being checked.

Everything is like safe when you're, you know, a child.

And it just became kind of the Halloween that we know today, but not really because, of course, talking about what Halloween has become in the digital age is a whole other conversation.

Right.

And I do not claim to have my finger on what Halloween is now, but it seems to involve a lot of trunk retreat.

Yes.

And a lot of doing stuff, like, not on the night, but on like the observed night of Halloween, on like a weekend night and doing stuff in broad daylight.

Yeah.

People should feel secure that their kids are safe and we don't live in a world that makes it easy to feel that way.

But like, yeah, I do want kids to be out in the dark, you know, doing things that will inconvenience me.

You know, it's their right and our inheritance.

Yeah.

I would like it if they didn't throw rocks at me, but, you know, they could could throw a small rock every now and then.

I probably deserve it.

Yeah, they can hit my house with one egg.

Yeah, one egg.

That's it.

I mean, in this economy, that's all they can afford.

Although, don't waste eggs, people.

Okay, what should we throw at people's houses?

Kale.

No, that's a food, technically.

Junk mail.

Balls of watted-up junk mail.

Yeah, okay, all right.

Okay, I feel like that's okay.

Yeah.

So I think today the story of Halloween is a story of a battle between kids and adults,

between like violence and over-the-top boring childlike fun, quote unquote.

You know, it's like, it seems like it's always been this attempt to find a balance between transgression and

kind of like a regular old boring day and

finding a way to like let kids have these experiences, but still do it in a way that is parent-sanctioned and safe.

And, you know, I don't, I don't have an opinion on how Halloween should or should not be.

I just know that I fucking love Halloween and I'm so happy to be here to talk to you about Halloween and to,

you know, spread the real history of what a journey Halloween has really gone on.

Well, yeah.

And also Halloween is like what we make of it.

And I love getting to celebrate it with you and to do, you know, a Halloween episode with you and to just, yeah, think about fear and think about what we need to sort of have a healthy culture and to sort of feel safe.

The ways of pretending to be in danger that help us feel safer.

In my ideal society, and I think in a healthy society, children know they are safe and therefore get to be scared.

Yes.

That's the dream.

Yeah.

Well, Chelsea, as always, it has been so wonderful to trick-or-treat around the block with you.

And I think, and by now,

people know we have a holiday show coming up.

Oh, yeah, we do.

We have a Christmas and New Year's winter solstice-y show, but it's also, it's very Halloween-y.

We're, I think, keeping the sort of wassail spirit of

Christmas as a very close cousin to Halloween.

And I'm so excited.

to get to do that with you again this December and January.

We're going to be up there in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and LA.

And yes, other cities are important, but we will be too tired to go to them.

And we hope to bring it to your town someday soon.

Yeah.

And this will be our massive seance

experience.

Chelsea, just thank you so much for everything.

And thank you for being my friend.

And oh, it is an honor.

The honor is

just, we we got to share it, I guess.

We trade it back and forth.

The youth honor is all mine.

Yeah.

And you make a show called American Hysteria.

It's wonderful.

It's amazing.

You're the rod Serling of our times.

Wow.

And

what should people listen to?

Throw us out some topics because I think it's, you know, even if people know generally what it's about, what's some stuff that you've done lately?

Well, skippity Toilet, of course.

Of course.

As we've talked about.

Our Halloween special is Buried Alive.

That'll come out pretty close to Halloween.

But yeah, we've done Killer Clowns, as you mentioned.

I'm just going to name some good Halloween topics.

Last year we did an episode called The 12-Foot Skeleton, and we did the history of the 12-foot skeleton, but also the history of skeletons as decorations in America, which is very fascinating too.

We did an episode called Haunted Attractions,

which we've talked quite a bit about today, but we have a whole episode that goes into like extreme haunted houses as well.

If you are interested in something weird, there is a good chance that in the last, I don't know, 200 and something episodes, we may have talked about it.

So I always say just scroll, just like, just scroll, see what you like.

All right, let's go take this egg somewhere.

All right, I'll bring my

fist full of of junk mail.

And that was our episode.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much to Kelsey Weber Smith for being our guest.

And please check out the American Hysteria catalog if you want to learn about haunted attractions, the 12-foot skeleton, haunted dolls, teenage poltergeists, or next week, being buried alive.

I personally am very invested in that one.

Thank you to Miranda Zickler for editing, and thank you to Carolyn Kendrick for producing and for writing little puns for me to say in the intro.

Happy Halloween.