Halloween 365
Bring Back the Christmas Ghost Story Tradition
For the last hundred years, Americans have kept ghosts in their place, letting them out only in October, in the run-up to our only real haunted holiday, Halloween. But it wasn’t always this way, and it’s no coincidence that the most famous ghost story is a...
read more
Unique Graves Have Haunting Tales to Tell
Have you heard about the mysterious Black Angel, the crypt with moving coffins, or Lilly Gray, "Victim of the Beast?" Every grave tells a story… And some are more “strange and unusual” than others. Most of these stories are prosaic enough, often...
read more
Roaming Charges May Apply: Did Edison’s “Spirit Phone” Really Communicate with the Dead?
In the late 1920s, not long before his death, Thomas Edison reportedly gathered with other scientists in a secret laboratory to record the voices and presence of the dead using “speakers, generators, and other experimental equipment.” Several years later, an...
read more
How Did the Victorian Mansion Become the Default “Haunted House?”
Visit your local Halloween haunted house or watch a horror movie, and you’ll probably see a creepy Victorian structure that simply exudes terror. But as art historian Sarah Burns points out, in the 1870s, Victorian houses were just…houses. “Half a century...
read more
Death Festivals Around the World
Mexico isn’t the only country that sets a date with the dead. Around the world, different countries, cultures, and religions have unique relationships with their dead. And yet, there are plenty of festivals of the dead—which take place over the course of days,...
read more
6 Ways to Make Halloween Safer for Your Pets
On Halloween, it may seem like a lot of fun dress up and jump out in a scary costume and shout “boo!” to scare our family and friends. That’s because most of us know who’s really underneath it. But it's different for pets. For example, masks and costumes that...
read more
High-Stakes Halloween Games That Can Tell Your Future… or Kill You!
These traditional Halloween Night games used fruits and vegetables to tell you who you will marry and when you will die… and sometimes even set you on fire! All Hallows’ Eve is a time when the veil between the world of the living and dead is thinner than...
read more
An Empire Built on Orange Crepe Paper – Dennison Halloween Ephemera
Halloween ephemera from the 1920 Bogie Book In the early 20th century, the Dennison Manufacturing Company built a business empire on Halloween costumes, pumpkin-themed party invitations, die-cut ghosts, and orange-and-black table decorations. For many years,...
read more
Very Stable (?) Geniuses – Why Halloween Fans are Smarter than Other People
All holidays are fun in their own ways (okay, maybe Flag Day and Arbor Day aren't all that exciting), but we know that nothing compares to Halloween. There are many reasons why Halloween is just hands down the best holiday of them all. You can dress up and be...
read more
Who Will Save Us from Sexy Pizza?
I’m usually a pretty open-minded person with a live-and-let-live philosophy of life. But sometimes you see things that are so ridiculous, annoying, or stupid that you can’t help but get your knickers in a twist. (Hoping it isn't just me...) Like one Halloween...
read more