Make America Great Again Jack O Lantern

On Halloween, people shed reality for a solar day and mark the vacation with costumes, decorations and parties. Creepy legends and characters have evolved based on existent, terrifying events. And a Halloween tradition of against the dead has led to legions of ghost stories—and hoaxes.

Read near Halloween traditions and legends:

A Fearfulness of Vampires Spawned past Consumption

Analogy of a family member dying from consumption in the 19th century.

Duncan 1890/Getty Images

During the 19th century, the spread of tuberculosis, or consumption, claimed the lives of unabridged families in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont and other parts of New England.

Earlier physicians were able to explain how infectious diseases were spread, hopeless villagers believed that some of those who perished from consumption preyed upon their living family members. This spurred a grim practice of digging upwardly the dead and burning their internal organs.

Read more about the 19th-century exhumations here.

Why Witches Wing on Brooms

The evil green-skinned witch flying on her magic broomstick may be a Halloween icon—and a well-worn stereotype. But the actual history backside how witches came to exist associated with such an everyday household object is anything but dull.

The earliest known epitome of witches on brooms dates to 1451, when 2 illustrations appeared in the French poet Martin Le Franc's manuscript Le Champion des Dames (The Defender of Ladies).

The association between witches and brooms may accept roots in a pagan fertility ritual, in which rural farmers would leap and dance astride poles, pitchforks or brooms in the light of the full moon to encourage the growth of their crops. This "broomstick dance" became dislocated with common accounts of witches flying through the night on their way to orgies and other illicit meetings.

Read more than about the fable behind witches flying on brooms here.

Why Haunted Houses Opened During the Great Depression

Halloween nighttime mischief inspired communities to open haunted houses during the Not bad Low.

Quavond/Getty Images

In the period leading upwardly to the Keen Depression, Halloween had become a fourth dimension when immature men could accident off steam—and cause mischief. Sometimes they went too far. In 1933, parents were outraged when hundreds of teenage boys flipped over cars, sawed off telephone poles and engaged in other acts of vandalism across the state. People began to refer to that year'due south holiday equally "Black Halloween," similarly to the style they referred to the stock marketplace crash four years earlier every bit "Black Tuesday."

Rather than banning the holiday, as some demanded, many communities began organizing Halloween activities—and haunted houses—to keep restless would-be pranksters occupied.

Read more about Smashing Low-era Halloween pranks here.

Jack-o-Lanterns and the Fable of 'Stingy Jack'

The original Jack-o-lanterns were carved out of turnips.

Sandsun/Getty Images

An Irish myth about a man nicknamed "Stingy Jack" is believed to have led to the tradition of carving scary faces into gourds. According to the fable, Jack tricks the Devil into paying for his drink so traps him in the form of a coin. The Devil eventually takes revenge and Stingy Jack ends upward roaming Earth for eternity without a place in sky or hell. Jack does, still, have a lighted coal, which he places inside a carved turnip, creating the original Jack-o-lantern.

Read more than about the origins of Jack-o-lanterns here.

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Abraham Lincoln'southward 'Ghost' in the White House

One of the last photographs of President Abraham Lincoln taken on March 6, 1865.

Library of Congress

For years, presidents, first ladies, guests, and members of the White House staff take claimed to have either seen Abraham Lincoln or felt his presence. Grace Coolidge, wife of Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, was the starting time person to report having seen the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. She said he stood at a window of the Oval Office, hands clasped behind his dorsum, gazing out over the Potomac, perhaps withal seeing the bloody battlefields beyond.

Read more than accounts of Lincoln'due south ghost sightings hither.

Spirit Photography Claims to Capture Ghosts on Film

A "spirit" photograph taken by William Mumler in the mail service-Ceremonious War era.

The J. Paul Getty Museum

In the post-Ceremonious War era, when many Americans were reeling from loss, a photographer named William Mumler claimed to capture ghosts on film. While taking self-portraits for do, ane of Mumler'due south prints came back with an unexplainable aberration. Although he was "quite alone in the room" when the shot was taken, there appeared to exist a figure at his side, a girl who was "fabricated of calorie-free."

Mumler showed the photo to a spiritualist friend who told him the daughter in the image was about certainly a ghost. Mumler then began a swift concern in so-called spirit photography.

Read about Mumler'due south work—and legal troubles—here.

Irving Writes 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' After Fleeing Yellowish Fever

An analogy from 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.'

Smithsonian American Art Museum, museum purchase fabricated possible in office by the Catherine Walden Myer Endowment, the Julia D. Stiff Endowment, and the Director'south Discretionary Fund

Washington Irving'due south 1820 tale of a headless horseman who terrorizes the real-life village of Sleepy Hollow is considered one of America's kickoff ghost stories—and i of its scariest. Irving may have drawn inspiration for his story while a teenager in Tarrytown, New York. He moved to the expanse in 1798 to flee a yellowish fever outbreak in New York City.

Irving'due south story takes place in the New York village of Sleepy Hollow. A lanky newcomer and schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, is chased by a headless horseman. In the tale, Irving weaves together actual locations and family unit names, and a niggling flake of Revolutionary War history with pure imagination and fantasy.

Read more most the origins of the famous Halloween story here.

Horror Movies Inspired by 'Real' Stories

The Amityville house that inspired a volume and a movie series.

Bettmann Annal/Getty Images

On November xiii, 1974, 23-year-quondam Ronald "Butch" DeFeo Jr. murdered his unabridged family in their slumber. Ane year later, the Lutz family purchased the house in Amityville, New York where the horror took identify. George and Kathy Lutz and so claimed they experienced shocking paranormal phenomena in the business firm: green slime oozing from the walls, a creature with red optics and multiple family unit members levitating in their beds.

The claims appeared in Jay Anson'southward 1977 book, The Amityville Horror, which inspired the 1979 movie of the aforementioned championship, which inspired many more movies.

Read more about real stories behind horror movies here.

Why Mary Shelley Carried Her Expressionless Hubby'southward Heart

Mary Shelley, 1831.

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

Frankenstein author, Mary Shelley, is world renowned for her terrifying fiction, simply few know that she had a dark undercover of her own. Shelley's husband, Percy, drowned at the young age of 29 when his boat was defenseless in a storm in July 1822.

Percy's body and those of his fellow sailors were institute ten days later. Percy Shelley and the others were cremated, but Shelley's centre did non burn (maybe due to a bout of tuberculosis before in this life). Mary Shelley somewhen took ownership of her tardily husband'southward centre and is said to take carried it around in a silk bag.Watch a video hither.

Find out more nearly Halloween.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/halloween-facts-traditions-legends

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