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| SoTW - me in a soldiers uniform and my host family's "Dennis the Menace" in blue and the neighborhood gang |
SoTW and Greg Reese reporting...
... As an exchange student living in Manchester, New Hampshire, back in the pre-smartphone late 1980s, Halloween wasn't all that different - specially with my first host family, whose dad was an American Vietnam grunt with lots of guns in the house and lots of scary stories to tell to an innocent teenager transitioning into adulthood. And I wasn't ready for the terror at that time😱
As God is my witness, the shadows are tightening. We are plummeting toward the unholy zenith of the calendar - the SRA Weekend, Satanist High, All Hallows Eve and Demon Revels Winter Season. These are nights fueled by demonic pacts, depraved ritual climaxes, and blood sacrifices of beast and man alike. Black Friday and Christmas Santa (Satan) are next in the dark queue of money scams. God help us, but the nightmare is already here😉...
SoTW Short SUM: For most of human history, late October in the Northern Hemisphere marked a season of visible death. Daylight collapsed, the harvest ended, fields were put to rest, and animals were slaughtered as winter’s existential struggle began. Ancient people built rituals around this darkest time of year. The Church originally set All Saints’ Day on May 13, but later moved it to November 1 under Pope Gregory so the season of decay would better honor the dead.
The night before became All Hallows’ Eve, eventually known as Halloween. Trick-or-treating grew from two old European customs. Souling involved the poor going door to door offering prayers for the dead in exchange for soul cakes, each one representing a soul released from purgatory. Guising came from Celtic folklore about otherworldly spirits called the Aos Sí that roamed freely when the veil between worlds thinned. Parents disguised their children as these frightening spirits to protect them, and the children performed songs, poems, or jokes to receive food or coins.
When Irish and Scottish immigrants brought these traditions to America, the performance requirement faded and the night turned toward mischief and destruction. By the 1920s Halloween had become a night of terror across the country. Young people tipped over outhouses, blocked roads, set fires to buildings, trains, and even a 500-gallon gasoline tank, fired guns casually, and killed people. The phrase “trick or treat” emerged as a simple bribe—an ultimatum of “give us sweets or pay the price” to stop the violence. The practice paused during World War II sugar rationing, then exploded into a commercial holiday after the war.
In Detroit, the night before Halloween became known as Devil’s Night, escalating from pranks into widespread arson that peaked in 1984 with over 800 fires lighting up the sky. The city eventually mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers and rebranded it Angels’ Night. In Madison, Wisconsin, a campus costume party grew into annual riots drawing over a hundred thousand people who smashed storefronts, tore down signs, and taunted police until the city gated the street, charged admission, and turned it into a controlled festival
