30 Facts About Halloween No One Ever Told You

Everyone loves Halloween. We get to dress up in costumes, eat tons of candy, and decorate our homes with all sorts of spooky accessories. But while Halloween is one of the most-celebrated American holidays, there's a lot many people don't know about it. To get you up to speed, we've rounded up 30 Halloween facts that are scary good. From how much money Americans spend on trick-or-treat sweets to the origin story of bobbing for apples, these facts will give you pumpkin to talk about!

Halloween just wouldn't be the same without a few spooky carved out pumpkins. But years ago in Ireland, where the jack o'-lantern tradition began, people made the decorations using vegetables that were more readily available to them: large potatoes and turnips. When the tradition made its way to the U.S. through immigration, Americans used pumpkins instead.

Bobbing for apples is a popular Halloween party game. But it turns out, the activity started as an 18th-century British courting ritual, according to the History Channel. In one set of rules, each apple was assigned to a potential suitor. The woman bobbing for apples would attempt to bite into the apple associated with her preferred suitor. If she bit it on the first try, they would be destined for love. If it took her two tries, their love would fizzle out. If it took her three, their relationship would be doomed.

A large full moon would certainly create the perfect atmosphere for a spooky night. However, it turns out that a full moon rarely happens on Halloween. According to The Old Farmers Almanac, a "full moon on Halloween only occurs roughly once every 19 years. If the full moons are calculated using Greenwich Mean Time, that translates to approximately three to four times per century." Lucky for us, a full moon is expected for Halloween 2020.

We Americans love our candy. So much so, that during Halloween week alone, we consume around 300,000 tons of the stuff, which is the equivalent of two pounds of candy per person. According to the data whizzes at Vox, if you put all that candy in one big pile, it would be enough to fill six Titanics! And for some activities to try at your Halloween get-together, don't miss these 16 Halloween Party Games for a Spook-tacular Event.

These white, orange, and yellow triangles of sugar are meant to resemble a kernel of corn. The candies were first created in 1898 by the Jelly Belly Candy Company while it was still known as California's Herman Goelitz Confectionary Company. Today, around 35 million pounds of it are produced each year, according to the National Confectioners Association. Despite that, they're often ranked one of the worst Halloween candies out there.

A lot of things changed during World War II, including the fact children didn't go trick-or-treating during the conflict. Because sugar was being rationed during the war, there wasn't any extra candy available for costumed children to collect. The tradition was paused until peacetimes returned.

When the war was over and sugar rationing ended, children were able to go trick-or-treating once again. However, since the conflict had gone on for years, many young ones had never been out on Halloween and weren't familiar with the concept. According to Business Insider, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and the Peanuts comic strip "helped to re-popularize the tradition of dressing up in costumes and asking for candy from door-to-door."

If you're interested in adding a black cat to your family around Halloween, you might have a little trouble tracking one down. In 2017, Lynda Garibaldi, director of The Cats' Cradle shelter in Morganton, North Carolina, told HuffPost that their organization does "not adopt out black cats during the month of October … because of superstition and the concern that the wrong people (who might harm them) might adopt them."

Emily Weiss, vice president of Shelter Research and Development at the ASPCA, confirmed that "this used to be a pretty common" precaution. Thankfully, she added that these days, some shelters hold special adoption promotions around Halloween that focus on finding black cats their fur-ever homes.

The largest Ouija board in the world was created on the roof of the Grand Midway Hotel, an appropriately haunted establishment in Windber, Pennsylvania. Measuring 1,302.54 square feet, the Ouija board has amped-up hauntings since it was installed, according to the project's co-creator and hotel resident, filmmaker Blair Murphy.

"Things flipped out throughout the hotel. Energies were swirling. Guests were getting completely freaked out," Murphy told Guinness World Records in 2017. "It seemed to kick things up into an entirely new level of paranormal activity. We were seeing floating people and hearing voices and even the hotel pets were flipping out and reacting to unseen forces. Our dreams were pretty wild. And it wasn't just us. Other longer-term hotel residents were saying, 'There is absolutely something going on here' and having their own middle-of-the-night weird encounters."

Orange is associated with Halloween because it's a harvest color (think of orange pumpkins and leaves) and black is associated with Halloween because of its links to death and darkness. But nowadays, purple is used almost as frequently in seasonal décor. So what gives?

According to Scientific American, the third shade was added to please little ones. "As a child-friendly color, it may have been used to soften the use of black and make the holiday and its themes palatable to a younger crowd."

Trick-or-treating has been a beloved Halloween tradition in North America for nearly a century, but it actually began in what is now the U.K., Ireland, and northern France. According to the History Channel, Halloween originated as a 2,000-year-old pre-Christian Celtic pagan festival, in which "villagers disguised themselves in costumes made of animal skins to drive away phantom visitors."

Centuries later, people began dressing as ghosts, demons, and other devilish creatures and performed antics in exchange for food and drink. "This custom, known as mumming, dates back to the Middle Ages and is thought to be a predecessor of trick-or-treating," the History Channel notes.

Halloween, in one form or another, may have been around for thousands of years, but we've only been saying "trick or treat" for about 100 years. According to Nick Rogers, historian and Halloween expert, the earliest reference to the now-familiar term can be found in a newspaper clipping from The Blackie Times published in Blackie, Alberta, on November 3, 1927. "It's a very interesting excerpt in two ways," Rogers told the Calgary Eyeopener, according to the CBC. "It not only talks about trick-or-treating, but it talks a little bit about the kind of ritual vandalism that accompanied the holiday, particularly in the interwar years."

The only way to make an already cute pet even cuter is by giving them a costume. And, according to a 2017 survey by the National Retail Federation, 16 percent of those celebrating Halloween dress up their pet. The most common pet costumes that year were pumpkins, hot dogs, dogs, lions, pirates, bumblebees, and devils.

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Google's Frightgeist is a handy tool that allows you to check out which costumes are trending across the United States. In 2018, the site revealed that the most popular Halloween costumes included a few modern figures, including Fortnite characters and Marvel's Harley Quinn. However, the list also included plenty of classic costumes, like Spider-Man, dinosaurs, witches, pirates, and princesses.

It turns out, a child's costume can seriously impact their behavior. One 1979 study published in Psychological Reports found that children in costumes with masks tend to take more candy from unattended candy bowls than children who wore costumes without masks.

If you're celebrating Halloween in Hollywood, then be sure to leave your silly string at home. In 2004, the city passed an ordinance that banned silly string from the area on that day. If you're caught with silly string between 12 a.m. on October 31 and 12 p.m. on November 1, you might find yourself with a $1,000 fine. Along with being bad for the environment and a nuisance to clean up, the ordinance also claims that silly string "may cause pedestrians and police officers on horseback or motorcycles to slip and fall."

While you might assume that we carve our jack-o'-lantern designs into a big ol' orange vegetable every year, it turns out that pumpkins are actually a fruit. To be more specific, pumpkins are a type of squash.

If you enjoy a pumpkin pie this Halloween, there's a high chance that the filling inside it came from Illinois. According to the Department of Agriculture, Illinois harvests three to five times as many pumpkin acres as any of the other top pumpkin-producing states. Almost 80 percent of the acres they devote to the fruit are harvested specifically for pumpkin pie filling or other processing uses. California, Indiana, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio Pennsylvania, and Texas also produce a large number of pumpkins.

If you're looking for the United States' oldest official Halloween celebration, then you should head to Anoka, Minnesota. The city started holding an annual parade and bonfire back in 1920 after European immigrants first brought the spooky seasonal fun over to America around the 1800s. According to National Geographic, "Anoka historians say townsfolk wanted to curb Halloween pranks that loosed cows on Main Street and upended outhouses."

Escape artist Harry Houdini became famous for narrowly dodging death. However, while his sudden passing in 1926 wasn't directly related to any of his magic tricks, it was a mystery. According to the History Channel, "the 52-year-old performed before a packed house in Detroit on October 24, but was rushed to the hospital afterward with an apparent case of appendicitis. He died just a week later on Halloween, leaving his legions of admirers bewildered."

You're not alone if you tend to shell out more cash on Halloween than you'd like to admit. According to the National Retail Federation's annual survey, Americans spent an estimated $9 billion on Halloween-related goods in 2018. That's about $86.79 per person and that's pretty scary, if you ask us!

According to a 2018 report from the National Retail Foundation, however, men spend $14 more, on average, than their female counterparts.

Men and women don't only differ in how much money they plan to shell out for this spooky holiday. They also spend their time differently during the scary season. "Women are much more likely than men to celebrate by carving pumpkins and decorating their homes," according to the National Retail Foundation report. "Men, on the other hand, are significantly more likely to attend a party."

Actor-turned-songwriter Bobby "Boris" Pricket earned the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1962 with his tune "Monster Mash." According to Steve Greenberg, the founder of S-Curve Records and a Grammy-winning record producer, "Monster Mash" is "the Halloween equivalent of 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' or 'Frosty the Snowman.'"

In 2017, Warner Bros released It, a retelling of Stephen King's terrifying tale about an epically nightmarish clown. The freaky film brought in a staggering $327.48 million, making it the highest-grossing R-rated horror movie of all time. It's followed by 1973's The Exorcist ($232.91 million), 2017's Get Out ($176.04 million), 1999's The Blair Witch Project ($140.54 million), and 2013's The Conjuring ($137.4 million)—that's a whole lot of money-making horror!

For those who practice Wicca, a pagan nature-based spirituality, October 31 isn't only Halloween, it's also the New Year. Called Samhain (pronounced "sow-win"), Wiccans mark the occasion as the passing of one year and the beginning of another. "In the Druid tradition, Samhain celebrates the dead with a festival on October 31 and usually features a bonfire and communion with the dead," according to the History Channel.

While Samhain is a Wiccan occasion, the similar-sounding samhainophobia is the fear of Halloween. "Defined as a persistent, abnormal, and unwarranted fear of Halloween," according to Very Well Mind. The problem can stem from the dislike of being scared and surprised, or might be based on related triggers such as ghosts or vampires, blood or tombstones, darkness, or lightning.

Most people know that it's bad luck to break a mirror or walk under a ladder, but there are other Halloween superstitions that may seem downright strange. For instance, some folks believe that if a candle burns a blue flame on October 31, a ghost might be haunting it. Others believe that if you speak during dinner on Halloween, it encourages spirits to come to the table.

This exciting festival just might be the most Instagramable Halloween event on the planet. Every year, a team of artisans carves more than 7,000 jack-o'-lanterns. The pumpkins are incorporated into a variety of exhibits, including a Pumpkin Planetarium, a Pumpkin Carousel, and even a 25-foot-tall jack-o'-lantern Statue of Liberty, complete with synchronized lightning and custom soundtrack.

If you're looking to see a lot of jack-o'-lanterns in one place, then head to the city of Keene, New Hampshire. On October 19, 2013, this town set the world record for most lit jack-o'-lanterns on display. Keene was the original record holder in this category and has broken its own record eight times since its original attempt. The display is currently up to 30,581 jack-o'-lanterns! And to find out more about cool Halloween festivals, check out the 15 Spook-Tacular Halloween Festivals Around the Country.

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