“Cabbage-stump-throwing night”- that’s what a New Haven newspaper dubbed Halloween in 1882. It was a time when ordinances seemed suspended and acts that would usually land people in jail were freely committed. In 1883, the neighborhood of Dixwell Avenue and Foote Street was turned into a “howling wilderness” and “cabbage stumps, turnips, bricks” were used as ammunition. The chaos extended to North Bank Street and it was reported that Mrs. Ann Corcoran was hit in the mouth. Boys would “break loose and start out for mischief”, carrying “portable articles” away, “swapping signs”, “unhinging gates” and “swatting unwary pedestrians with paper sacks of flour”. Over in Milford the Wepawaug River became a “receptacle for chicken coops, fences, …wagons”. In 1898 Yale students gathered up stray boards, shutters, gates and pieces of fence, which “blazed up into a bonfire” in the Temple Street neighborhood.  The Yale Criminal Club was on hand to assist those arrested! [1]

In 1905 “bands of urchins grotesquely costumed paraded the streets in the center of the city” and “one plump youngsters wearing female disguise elicited roars of laughter wherever he appeared”. “Masqueraders locked arms and rushed up and down Chapel street yelling at the top of their voices”. “Torpedoes were exploded, gates reversed, doors bombarded and all manner of pranks played”. In 1910, Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Galligan of Elm Street had a party with friends. Tables were “decorated with lighted pumpkin heads, hobgoblins and flowers”. Dr. and Mrs. Devereaux went as Happy Hooligan and Yama Girl, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hemmeler as ghosts and Mr. and Mrs. John McQuiggan as college sport and Spanish dancing girl. In 1915, Edward P. Judd’s store on Chapel Street was the place to get “clever novelties for table decorations, and favors for dance parties”. Societies such as the Scottish Caledonian Club, whose hall was located on State Street, would hold annual Halloween celebrations. [2]

“Duck and catch” (apple bobbing), burning nuts and ghost stories were popular at parties and games were played which foretold the future. Apples were peeled in one unbroken curl, the peel waved “slowly three times around the head” and dropped. “It ought to form something very like the first letter of the future bride’s or husband’s name”. An unmarried girl would walk into a dark room with a candle and was supposed to see her future husband in the mirror and unmarried men were blindfolded and told to choose from three dishes which indicated whether he would marry a spinster, widow or “die a poor, forlorn old bachelor”. [3]

In 1928, it was reported that Halloween was no longer a time when “anything went”. Less gates were stolen since they had been replaced with hedges and instead “motorists suffered the most” since air was let out of tires and “seats filled up with slightly decomposed vegetables”.[4]

Halloween originates from the Celtic harvest holiday of Samhain. What is now November 1^st was the beginning of winter and it was believed this was the time when “the souls of those who had died during the year traveled into the otherworld” and “the ghosts of the dead were able to mingle with the living”. Christians attempted to replace Samhain with All Saints day (All Hallows day) but this failed and All Hallows Eve, Hallowe’en still celebrated. Although Halloween was observed in some parts of colonial America, it was the influx of immigrants in the mid to late nineteenth century that helped increase the popularity of the holiday nationally. [5]