9 Halloween Tales & Traditions. History.Com Editors

9 Halloween Tales & Traditions

HISTORY.COM EDITORS

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

Read about Halloween traditions and legends:

A Fear of Vampires Spawned by Consumption

llustration 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 entire families in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont and other parts of New England.

Before 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 up the dead and burning their internal organs.

Why Witches Fly 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 behind how witches came to be associated with such an everyday household object is anything but dull.

The earliest known image of witches on brooms dates to 1451, when two 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 have 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 confused with common accounts of witches flying through the night on their way to orgies and other illicit meetings.

Why Haunted Houses Opened During the Great Depression

Halloween night mischief inspired communities to open haunted houses during the Great Depression. Quavond/Getty Images

In the period leading up to the Great Depression, Halloween had become a time when young men could blow 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 country. People began to refer to that year’s holiday as “Black Halloween,” similarly to the way they referred to the stock market crash four years earlier as “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.

Jack-o-Lanterns and the Legend 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 legend, Jack tricks the Devil into paying for his drink and then traps him in the form of a coin. The Devil eventually takes revenge and Stingy Jack ends up roaming Earth for eternity without a place in heaven or hell. Jack does, however, have a lighted coal, which he places inside a carved turnip, creating the original Jack-o-lantern.

Abraham Lincoln’s 'Ghost' in the White House

For years, presidents, first ladies, guests, and members of the White House staff have claimed to have either seen Abraham Lincoln or felt his presence. Grace Coolidge, wife of Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, was the first 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 back, gazing out over the Potomac, perhaps still seeing the bloody battlefields beyond.

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

Spirit Photography Claims to Capture Ghosts on Film

Irving Writes ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ After Fleeing Yellow Fever

In the post-Civil 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 practice, one of Mumler’s prints came back with an unexplainable aberration. Although he was “quite alone in the room” when the shot was taken, there appeared to be a figure at his side, a girl who was “made of light.”

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

A "spirit" photograph taken by William Mumler in the post-Civil War era. The J. Paul Getty Museum

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

Irving’s 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 names, and a little bit of Revolutionary War history with pure imagination and fantasy.

An illustration from 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.' Smithsonian American Art Museum, museum purchase made possible in part by the Catherine Walden Myer Endowment, the Julia D. Strong Endowment, and the Director's Discretionary Fund

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow resurfaces every year around Halloween. Washington Irving's 1820 tale of a headless horseman who terrorizes the real-life village of Sleepy Hollow is considered one of America's first ghost stories—and one of its scariest.

But Irving didn’t invent the idea of a headless rider. Tales of headless horsemen can be traced to the Middle Ages, including stories from the Brothers Grimm and the Dutch and Irish legend of the “Dullahan” or “Gan Ceann,” a Grim Reaper-like rider who carries his head.

Elizabeth Bradley, a historian at Historic Hudson Valley, says a likely source for Irving’s horseman can be found in Sir Walter Scott’s 1796 The Chase, which is a translation of the German poem The Wild Huntsman by Gottfried Bürger and likely based on Norse mythology.

“Irving had just met and become friends with Scott in 1817 so it's very likely he was influenced by his new mentor's work,” she says, “The poem is about a wicked hunter who is doomed to be hunted forever by the devil and the ‘dogs of hell’ as punishment for his crimes.”

According to the New York Historical Society, others believe Irving was inspired by “an actual Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball during the Battle of White Plains, around Halloween 1776.”