Where Did Trick-Or-Treating Come From?

We aren’t exactly sure who invented trick-or-treating – kids who realized they could extort adults for candy, or adults who bought off kids in exchange for laying off pranks? The bigger question is: Will trick-or-treating survive the 21st century?

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Brian over there,
and there's Jerry And this is Stuff you Should Know
the right before Halloween. Addition about it, I get like

(00:25):
a little kid every Alloween. I'm pretty excited about it. Yeah,
do you get trick or treaters? No? Not really, no
kind of life hashtag, etcetera. Yeah, And I've told my
story before, but I'll just briefly summarize again that my
house is after a big curve in the road, and
people seem to just stop at that curve in the road. Well,
they don't want to come up on old man Bryant's house.

(00:48):
You know, the old dead oak tree with the big
hole in it that yeah Boo Radley hides figures in
its kind of off putting. It's right on your property.
And I think, uh, in my neighborhood too. They close
they literally close off, the cops close off two blocks.
This's just this big square of streets and that's the
official sanctioned no stress area where the parents all just

(01:12):
walk around and get drunk and all the kids just
run around and don't have to worry about cars. So um,
everyone in my neighborhood is congregated there and you're outside
of them outside, yeah, which I kind of miss, Like
I like tricker treaters coming to my house. Like I
guess I could maybe try, and well, I can move

(01:32):
a few houses in which I'm not gonna do. We
could casually move the roadblocks of a little further back
to include your house. One of their actual police cars
with police officers, and I can't move them, but I
could put signs that like you know this way for
the best yet and then you like only two more
houses right, or like leave a trail of candy because

(01:53):
I remember when I first moved to Atlanta, we rented
a house that got a lot of Tricker treaters and
I loved it. Man, I scared at the heck out
of those kids. Yeah, it was a lot of fun,
Like I really got that was my first big adult
giving out candy night, Like the first time I've ever
been able to do that because you didn't have kids yet,
so we weren't out trick or treating and uh yeah,

(02:15):
I made a really pumped music out like the psycho
theme and scary John Carpenter stuff. I really enjoyed it.
Did you like do anything to overtly scare them? Oh? Yes,
I wore a I was dressed up as a very
scary person, and I would jump out and scare them
over and over and over. Did you really jump out?

(02:37):
Good for you? Or I would stand in the like
Emily would be giving out candy and I would just
be in the darkened house, like eight feet behind her,
just standing there motionless. That's always a nice attack. But
the point is I sort of feel like we're missing out.
Like we certainly enjoyed taking our daughter out, but I
really wish we had kids that came by. Yeah, I
wish you did too, too bad. Stupid us right there

(03:00):
near the main road, so close yet so far away,
so far away, and that's your forever house to huh. Yeah,
no trick or treaters ever again for you. I walked
in there. But what we could do is, you know,
we could go to a friend's house, and that this accounting.
You have to jump on their coattails. You can't sit
on their couch, you have to take your shoes off
in their house. You can't be comfortable We've long talked

(03:22):
to me and my friend Eddie and Allison, you know them,
about they have a good backyard. It's about doing like
a haunted trail one year that like, if you come
trick or treating, you've got to go through the trail first.
It sounds like a lot of work. It is, and
it would be fun, you know, I mean for the
kids who have to go through the trail. Gotta earn
you gotta earn that free candy, earned that Reese's pieces.

(03:43):
So we just hit upon like fifteen different themes in
this episode, if you'll if you'll agree, I agree. Um,
So we're talking about trick or treating here, and if
you look at the thing on its face, just the
words trick or treat, there seems to be some sort
of option here you can do one or the other.

(04:04):
There used to be give me a treat or you
get a trick, basically was the equation. Yeah, they should
just change the name now to just treat night, treat
night right exactly. Um. We aren't sure on where trigger
treating came from, but what we do know is that
it was originated in America in the twentieth century, and
that there was this really like brief golden age where

(04:26):
it lived up to his name, trick or treat. There
was a there was an offer to not get pranked
or tricked, and if you didn't take the people up
on the offer, the kids up on the offer by
giving him candy, you got pranked. That was the equation.
It was in the name. Everybody knew the score. And
then it slowly kind of moved over to what we
understand today where the police set up roadblocks and everything

(04:49):
is safe these kids these days, and it's just kinda
just like you said, just the treat side of the equation. Yeah,
I was, of course kidding, but we'll get to it.
There are people that really do decry this new generation
of children who just expect handouts and that it leads
to the idea of the welfare state and all this
other garbage that I have no patience for because it's

(05:12):
just a fun thing for kids. Yeah, or do you
think they should be earning this stuff? No? No, no,
I don't feel that way. I do feel well, I
think it will come through loud and clear as we
do the episode. Right, Well, we should jump back a
little bit to the origins of Halloween. We've gone over
this before in episode's past. But we all know it
originally started as a pagan harvest or not just one,

(05:33):
but pagan harvest festivals in general among the Celts over
in the UK and uh, that evolved into Halloween, but
it had nothing to do with trick or treating at
the time. No, it wasn't round Again, trick or treating
is a pent American invention, that's right. Um. And so
with Halloween in particular, you've got all these different components

(05:55):
for the modern Halloween. For trick or treating, you have
going from house to how you have getting to said
house and asking for a treat, basically sanctioned begging, costume, costume,
dressing up, um, got being outside kind of parading around.
All of these things find their origin in the Celtic
and I think specifically Gaelic um harvest festivals that introduced

(06:19):
the dark half of the year, that's right. And in
particular there was Salwint, which forever I've always said sam
Haine because that's how it spelled. Now, you said Salen
right when we did our Halloween episode, didn't you. Probably,
by the way, speaking of Sawin or sam Haine, you
realized that I went to New York and saw the
Misfits on. How was that colossally amazing? This is the

(06:43):
original Misfits, right, the original Misfits, Glenn dan ziggery only
Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein who actually specifically invited us to this, right, yes,
um to this uh this show, and it was that's amazing.
Knock your socks off? Didn't the Damned play as well?
The Damned open and then ran sid and then the
Misfits just tore the roof off the succer I saw

(07:04):
when I saw you were going. I looked up some
YouTube clips of this tour and it looked pretty amazing.
It was amazing, and I think Glenn Danzig said that
was their last one ever and so we got to
see it. Yeah, you mean I had a great time. Amazing,
So big, big thanks to Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein for
the invite. The stage set up look great, it was.
It was just a really cool show and they played

(07:26):
almost everything. Yeah, yeah, it was just really good. That's fantastic.
So anyway back to Swin, Yeah, so, uh, I mean
that's a perfect time to mention that show though all
worked out, it did. Um. Hallow's Eve was the night
considered when the veil between the living and the dead
was the shortest, and so that's when this that's when

(07:50):
Halloween formed, right, right, So people would dress up in
like modern day Ireland, Scotland, I believe, Wales, yell of
and um. They would dress up like demons or fairies
or supernatural characters who were um because this veil was
so thin between the living and the dead or the supernatural. Um,

(08:11):
they could cross over. These creatures could cross over and communicate.
So if you dressed up like them, maybe they would
be confused and think you're one of them and leave
you alone. That's right. So this now we've got the
costume thing going right, that's right. And uh, part of
that was the community getting together, uh getting drunk on
you know, probably high octane mead, meat and stuff like that.

(08:35):
And they would parade through the town. They saw Halloween
parades all over the place. Here in Atlanta we have
one of the best and little five Points Halloween parraade. Fantastic,
Like when you think about the Halloween parade at your town,
like that is centuries millennia old, that tradition is. Yeah,
So we have those two things going on, and then
the one missing piece is knock knock, Hey, give me candy.

(08:59):
But this we have the origins of which came and
it's still not Halloween. It took American kids to put
all this stuff together. But the European tradition of souling,
which was when kids on hallows E would go from
house to house house and pray for the souls of
the departed, and in exchange you would get a soul cake. Yeah,

(09:20):
which I looked up. They looked pretty good. What is it?
Just a little bit good. It looks like a muffin top,
like top of the muff into you. It looks really
good soul cakes or mumming which is and this sounds fantastic.
I wish kids still had to do this stuff. You
would have to perform a short musical number or some
kind of performance to get a treat of some kind,

(09:43):
maybe a little spear change. Right, So in that sense
you have going to house to house and getting something
from the owners of the house, like a treat or
something like that. That's right, But there was a reason
for that, praying for the soul of their departed loved one,
doing a little dance number something like that. The prank
part the prank part of the equation that also existed
before trick or treating too, and in fact, that was

(10:06):
kind of the origin or the biggest tradition of Halloween itself,
was pranking. Yeah, and that came from Ireland, Is that right? Yah?
Supposedly in the eighteen eighties they would prank. They would
just run around doing pranks, and then they would blame
those fairies or demons han sawen um for the mischief
that it wasn't us, it was the fairies, right, I

(10:29):
mean it sounds that's how it's spelled. Yeah, it's really
that's a confounding pronunciation, it is. But there you have it,
that's right. Uh. And then pranks back then, and of
course we're pretty low key uh ding dong ditch stuff
like that, um moving the neighbor's furniture to the roof.
I saw that, like flower pot on the chimney. Sure,
but it would also get way way worse than that. Yeah,

(10:53):
I looked up Mischief Night. We never did that in
Georgia or Devil's Night. It was also called yeah, just
the night before Halloween when all these pranks would happen. Um.
Region to region is called different. Apparently in Uh, New
Jersey it's Mischief Night, Cabbage Well in Camden, New Jersey's
Mischief Night. Other parts of New Jersey call it Cabbage Night.

(11:15):
UM Cincinnata calls it Damage Night. That's pretty over. That's
a punk band name right there, Damage Night totally, that
insurance deductible night other parts. I don't know why Ohio
is so highly represented here. Beggar's Night is something else.
They called it in Ohio because there's nothing else to
do in Ohio but sit around and wait for that

(11:36):
night for Hallow's Eve. Other names Doorbell Night, trick Night,
corn Night, tic Tech Night, Goosey Night. And then in Canada,
Gate Night or Matt Night if you're in Quebec because
mt they would take they would steal the gate off
your fence or the mat from your doorstep. And yeah, okay,

(11:57):
so they're pretty on the nose, especially Becambage Night. But
Devil's Night in Detroit. Uh, it became legendary over about
a twenty year period in the seventies and through the
mid nineties. I saw before they finally got a little
bit of a UM could put a dent in it
by forming Angels Night. Yeah, they kind of re rebranded it, well,

(12:22):
not rebranded. The angels were volunteers who would walk around
to keep kids from setting everything on fire, okay, because
that's what they did on Devil's Night. It was a
night of artis the night of arson. I thought that
it ran its course because they burned all the buildings
down in Detroit. There was nothing else left. It was
a real problem, though. I looked into it and like
hundreds of kids, Like in nineteen ninety four, I think

(12:43):
there were like three hundred and fifteen kids arrested, uh
from Devil's Night fires and other stuff. In the peak
of Devil's Night in Detroit, there were eight hundred and
ten cases of arson in one night. Amazing in Detroit. Yeah,
they would just set the city on fire. And I'm
sure some of these were bags of poop on a doorstep,

(13:04):
which I think we can all agree. It is harmless fun,
it is unless you're the steppy so overdid any of
the stuff? I never rolled the house. Oh you didn't know.
I was. I'm so mad. I was so busy being good.
Never too late, buddy, I know I should roll a
house fork a yard. I don't know what that is.
The plastic forks just basically get like two thousand plastic

(13:24):
forks and stick them in the yard. I've never heard
of that. We never did that, really chew up a
lawnmar I never egged a house because I always heard
that really damages paint. But we did have the junior
senior egg fight every year. That was kind of fun.
Well you go, you got something, We get together in
a field and uh the eggs at each other. Aside
from wasting a lot of resource with well eggs, yes,

(13:46):
but also um toilet paper. You really should roll somebody's
house at least it's great, is it? Yeah? All right, yeah,
I'm gonna roll your condo. I remember when I was
a kid. Actually my friend and I rolled the neighbor's house,
but we had to be in or at least, so
we were doing it basically in broad daylight. It was
dusk at best, and the cop drove by, which never

(14:10):
happened in our neighborhood ever. Never. The cops just weren't needed, right.
It was just I think we talked about in the
free Range episode in his Parents episode, you could just
do whatever, and um, we had to knock out of
the house of the neighbor whose house we just rolled
to let us in to hide from the cop, and
she went out and told the cop like, it's it's fine,
don't worry about it. We roll her house and had

(14:32):
to get safe harbor from her. Yeah, and you can't
really clean up a roll house, can't you. You can,
And if they come tell your parents what you did.
The rain makes it way worse. Yeah, but I mean
you can't just right, some of it's inevitably stuck up there.
But you can pull it down as as gingerly as
you can to get as much as you can. But no,
something's going to be left over, all right, I'm gonna

(14:55):
roll a house, Okay, just know whose house you're rolling like,
you don't want to get shot at her. And I
don't see that anymore either, I feel like it. I mean,
I don't live in the suburbs. Maybe it's a little
more prone to happen there, but it seems like a
lost art very well. Maybe I don't know anybody who rolls.
I just assumed it was because we'd outgrown it, you know.
Emily called it t being a house. Yeah that's Ohio. Yeah, alright,

(15:19):
let's take a break. Were barely talked about this. I
think we're one page in good that's great, all right,

(15:47):
stuff you should know, stuff you should you shouldn't know. Alright.
So to recap Chuck, we have the costumes in play now,
we have being out on Halloween nights sometimes parading drunkenly community. Um,

(16:07):
we have going from house to house, and we have
the prank factor. That's all of these things are out
there floating around, have been out there for centuries, millennia
by the time America is born and makes it to
the twentieth century. And at some point some kids said,
we think, hey, you know what, we can pull all
this together and turn it into something really amazing and

(16:30):
peculiar and unique called trick or treating. That's right. You
found a great piece, uh from a sociologist named Samira Kawash,
great name called gangsters, pranksters and tricker treating ninety to
nineteen sixty. And is this that pure period that you

(16:50):
were talking about where she thinks that American kids just
created this thing. Yeah, there's two historical views because we
don't know where it came from. One historical view and
I think this is what co Wash believes to is
that it was actually kids who figure this out. Which
is great. Who said we can extort adults to not
prank them if they give us treats and that it

(17:12):
was a genuinely a kid invention of kids they made
it up, and um, there's some evidence for that kind
of thing. A lot of like the early newspaper accounts
of it kind of called the kids gangsters and say
they're extorting people. It's also possible that was like written
super tongue in cheek and that that dry. It was

(17:32):
kind of dry and lost to the ages. The other
historical view is that the kids were out pranking and
doing the pranks and it was the adults that introduced
treats into the equation to buy them off, Yeah, to
keep them from pranking. Uh. Los Angeles possibly as the
point of origin. Um, and this one wealthy kids. I

(17:58):
guess that makes sense that this would be the idea
of like kids of privilege, you know, like come around,
give me stuff. But apparently in Los Angeles, kids in
the wealthy parts of town would dress up and their
parents would take them around from house to house. And
this is, um, this is that pre nineteen thirty period though, Yeah,
they think sometime in the twenties. And if you think

(18:19):
about it, that really resembles what we do today. Yeah,
But in between that origin and where where we've arrived today,
there was this pure period nineteen thirty and nineteen sixties.
Some people might even take it a little further beyond that,
where the kids seem to have run the show. And um,

(18:40):
there there really was both sides of the equation a
trick or a treat, right, But that term actually was
in nine seven and an article rights that the first
time they found the two words in print together our
guess three words. That was in an article about a
town uh called Blackie and Albert to Canada. And it

(19:02):
seems like all of it was sort of on the
West coast early on. Yeah, and again they think possibly
it did originate in Los Angeles, or it may have
originated in multiple towns on the West Coast roughly at
the same time. But we're thinking twenties because in nineteen
nineteen there was a book by Ruth Edna called Ruth
and Nickel Ruth endic Kelly called the Book of Halloween,

(19:23):
and it didn't mention any kind of trick or treating
in there. No, And it's like an exhaustive, comprehensive homemakers
would have been in there for sure. And you gotta think,
like poor Ruth and Nickelly' is like, gosh, if I
just waited like two years and put this book out,
they're gonna come up with something brand new with Halloween.
Two years after I come up with this book, I

(19:43):
wrote the book on it. Not quite now it's out
of date, but they did find mentions of it in
newspapers out West Portland, Washington, Reno, Nevada, Nevada, Helena, Montana.
And you can kind of track its progress from the
dates and mentions in West these paper articles. Right. Yeah. Um,
So there's those two sides. One say that it was

(20:05):
kids who came up with it on their own. Um,
perhaps they were introduced with the idea of going from
house to house to get treats in Los Angeles, but
then they said, well, we're also doing these prankings. Maybe
we can say, hey, we won't prank you if you
give us a treat. There's that view. The other view
again is that, um, it was adults who said, whoa kids,
You know, we don't want you setting fires any longer,

(20:27):
derailing street cars because every once a while somebody would die,
people would get shot at by angry neighbors. Um. Sometimes
somebody would be in one of those buildings that they
set on fire and they die. People would die in
a building that kids set on fire as a Halloween prank.
So for the most part, though, it was this kind
of um tolerated as one night a year when the

(20:48):
kids basically had power and we're allowed to run the show. UM.
So that this idea, this other historical view that adults
finally said, hey, you know, we're not gonna just say
you can't do prank king. They'll probably be a bad thing.
But why don't we just start having parties on Halloween
night while we're out pranking, and they'll be cider and
donuts and you can come inside and bob for apples

(21:09):
and maybe do that instead of running around pranking the neighborhood.
And once you did do that, you went from and
this is um samir co washed putting it like you
under the rules of society. You went from this powerful
kid who could levy a prank on you if he
or she wanted to, to a house guest of the
adult who now had you in and had given you

(21:31):
donuts and cider. You're really going to set their house
on fire as a prank. After that, of course, not, no,
you're not going to so. In this sense, trigger treating
was something the adults introduced to keep kids from carrying
out these pranks. Yeah, and it was by the time
World War two came around. It was a big thing
in the nineteen forties. But of course, with the sugar

(21:52):
ration ng and just the fact that there was World
War Two going on, it put a dent in it
for a little while. But it came back um bigger
than it ever had been after the war. And I
mean seriously, it came very close to dying from World
War Two. It was pretty new. It hadn't gained that
much traction. There were a lot of cranks and grumps

(22:13):
who were not happy about this kind of thing. I'm
curious what else had died in the war and never
came back. There's got to be lots of little things.
It's a great question. But there were a couple of
big pop culture um sort of tent poles that helped
Halloween along Charles Schultz's Peanuts. Of course, it wasn't the
Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown yet that. Yeah, but in nineteen

(22:37):
fifty one he had a four day um comic strip
run around Halloween where the Peanuts gang got already and
got their costumes going, and that really brought it to
the forefront. Uh. And then Donald Duck Uh. There was
a cartoon Donald Duck Tricker Treat a year after that
that had Donald working with his nephews or trying to
prank his nephews while they were trick or treating and

(23:00):
working with the witch. And then the candy companies get involved.
There was also a very famous costume company called ben
Cooper Costumes did like the cheap yes plastic mask like
a vinyl smot, but they had this really great talent
of identifying what was going to be like a culture
phenomenon before it ever blew up to get the right

(23:22):
cheap but they were also making these things like ten
months before, so they really had to have foresight and
they were really good at it. But the fact that
you could get cheap, amazing costumes that the little kids
all wanted of their favorite characters that definitely helped things
along too. Yeah, it was It's hard to overstate like
how big of a deal it was to a kid

(23:43):
to be the certain whatever they wanted to be. I
think it's still that way. I'm sure it is, but
now it's a lot easier, I think to buy costumes.
I think when you and I were kids, there's a
lot of fashioning costumes. Uh, When you didn't have the
ability to be like the in from Alien or you know,
it was a lot harder to put together these elaborate costumes.

(24:06):
But once you get your heart set on it, you
like you had to, you know. So I'm going to
tell you my best costume, and you tell me yours. Okay, okay, um,
my mom made one from scratch. Clown is a clown costume.
But the big kicker was that it was an upside
down clown walking on his hands. So my feet were
the clown's hands. His head is like dangling between my legs.

(24:29):
I've got his legs sticking up off of my shoulders
and I don't remember my head must have been covered
up like I was in his butt or something like, right,
but I was upside down walking clown. Greatest costume ever? Yeah,
you got any pictures somewhere? YEA. Yeah. I did a
lot of funny ones, like my brother and I were
Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. When I was really little um.
But then I got into like I was always wanting

(24:52):
to do like funny characters. I like, like like Ed
Grimley one year, the Saturday Night Live character. I did
Ed Grimley one year, and I was I don't know
if like I was always trying to make people laugh.
I never did scary stuff until little kids started coming
around and trick or treating me at your house. Yes,
and you started just like movie characters. Like even into
my adult years, you know, I would try and find

(25:12):
some cool movie character, like Hi from Raising Arizona. I
did one year. It's almost a grimly same here. Uh No,
not same at all, actually uh. And then one year
I did a great actually won a contest in New
Jersey one year when I was a hardy Kushner and
I like, I shaved my head. I did the whole thing.

(25:33):
I had literature. I passed out. Wow, I made the
whole the whole deal. You just ended up joining a
local chapter for a little while. It was fine, really
got into the rule. But I haven't. It's been a
few years since I've dressed up here because I just, oh,
that's not true. I haven't been. I haven't been to
a Halloween party in probably five years. What were you

(25:55):
last year? I was Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, So
you were you but with a tie exactly and like
a giant inflatable brick cell phone. And you me was
a specific Michael Jackson. A moment of Michael Jackson's history
where he's holding blanket over the balcon and Momo was blanket.

(26:17):
It's on you can see it on Instagram. That's great.
You have to check that out, alright. So the candy
company started getting involved. That's where I left off in
the costume company. They knew it was gold from them,
mars Uh Incorporated. In the early nineteen fifties, We're doing
ad campaigns on TV and in newspapers and on the
radio and stuff about trick or treat um it became

(26:41):
a thing with UNICEF. They had a Trick or Treat
for UNICEF campaign back then. I think they still might,
you know, you know, I'm talking about the little boxes
holds change and they would just give them too little kids.
And while they wrote Trick or Treat, and they'd also
asked for change for unisf to help needy kids overseas.
And that actually when he really long way to legitimizing
trick or treating. Yeah, they're doing a lot in these days.

(27:03):
Two for kids, special needs kids, like it's it's taken
this long to finally get the word out, like the
blue pumpkins. Have you heard of those? If you trick
or treat with a blue pumpkin, that means that you
have some sort of special need where you may not
be able to walk to a front door and say,
trick or treat. I'm dressed as you know Michigan j
bullfrog what it would be a great it would be.

(27:27):
But did you pull that off of I just made Yeah. Wow, nice.
He's been on my mind lately, I guess. But uh
so people know like, oh, you've got a blue pumpkin,
so I shouldn't say, like, you know, come on, kid,
why don't you tell me what your costume is? And uh,
it's good though, like that it's taken It's ironic that

(27:47):
it's taken this long to get parents on board to
the fact that some kids need, you know, different kinds
of treatment. I don't know if ironic is the best
word as much as disappointing is. Yeah, you know, you're
probably right. Should we take another break? Oh my god?
We're gonna have to take three more. Okay, yes we will.
Then stuff you should stuftuff you should you should know alright,

(28:40):
So I think basically what we were saying when we
left off. And sorry about the nostalgia here everybody, but
I mean, come on, you get us in a room. Yeah,
around Halloween, it's gonna happen. Um. So, by the early fifties,
trigger treating was huge and established and had so if
the nineteen sixty was the Heyday, the golden age of

(29:02):
trick or treating, um, nineteen fifty to nineteen fifty nine
was the salad days of the Heyday? Right? And when
did people start complaining about it the seventies? No, as
far back as the twenties, Oh yeah, because those newspaper
articles that you can track the progress of Halloween, more

(29:24):
often than not they were like old cranks complaining about
how they didn't want to have to give tricks or
treats or whatever the little kids. Don't you blackmail me?
They don't. Yeah, exactly, you know, what are we teaching
our kids? And there's actually, um if you kind of
scratch beneath the surface of trick or treating, at first,
it appears to be kind of a weird power struggle

(29:45):
between kids and adults, and it definitely is that. But
there's also another power struggle going on between adults of
two different minds, ones who are like you are overparenting
by being upset about this or this is just one
night a year, it's good for kids, and other people
are saying like this is terrible for kids, well, allowing

(30:06):
them to go from house to house to beg is
it just a bad idea? It's unsafe is another way
to put it too. So there's like a struggle weirdly
over trick or treating, and it has to do with
under parenting and over parenting and that conversation about the
whole thing. I have seen parents ruined kids experiences, whether
it's like a Easter egg hunt or trick or treating.

(30:28):
I've seen this in action because they're too involved. Yeah,
I mean, that's what it comes down to, is just
how involved are you and your kids trick or treating.
For a very brief period, there was very little involvement
in kids trick or treating um and a lot of
people say that's actually really good for kids. In this

(30:49):
other way that we've kind of started to evolve toward
is not. Yeah, I don't remember my parents taking me
around trick or treating. I'm sure that happened maybe when
I was really little, and we certainly would have had
to go somewhere else because you know, I've lived on
the dirt road, the dirt road with no no neighbors,
um or very few of them. But I just all

(31:10):
my memories stem from being like probably ten to fifteen
and being completely on my own with my friends ten
to fifteen, ten years old. But to fifteen, that's pretty late.
What to trick or treat? Oh? Now, we trick or
treated up until probably the like the ninth or tenth grade. Well,
we'll get to it. But in some places you get

(31:31):
to get arrested for that. When did you stop? You'd
still trick or treat if they would let you. Uh.
I think I stopped around thirteen. Maybe fifteen was too late.
Maybe thirteen or fourteen you're fine enough. Teens, great, go
with God. No, but you're you're probably right now that
I'll look back. Maybe I went to Halloween parties, but

(31:52):
maybe there's kind of an unofficial slash official again in
some places, UM cut off after twelve? Really done? Yeah,
because their teen you're a teenager now, and that's that's
not kids stuff. As we'll see, it's allegedly trick or
treating is a transition from kidhood to adulthood. And by
the time you're thirteen, you've you've made in that transition
that's in your past. It's sad, but it's I don't

(32:15):
know why I'm talking like Christopher walk and all of
a sudden, but I am. Yeah, maybe I wasn't going
that late, but I definitely remember going by myself at
a certain point. But now with my neighborhood is just
the I see mostly parents not involved at all. They're
they're they're kind of like if your child is two

(32:35):
or three, helping them walk to the door and stuff.
But otherwise we're just drinking and the kids are doing
their things. So let's talk about this. Then let's skip
towards the end and we'll jump back. Okay, there is
um this debate over you know, whether it's better to
just kind of cross your fingers and and hope for

(32:55):
the best and let your kids go out and trick
or treat on their own, whether that's good or whether
we need to Um, the world is just too unsafe
for that, and we need to much more manage kids
trigger treating than just letting them go out on their own.
It depends on where you are. That's the big divide.
And one of my personal heroes, the World's Worst Mom,

(33:16):
Lenore Scnazzi, who came up with the Free Range Kid's
blog and the whole movement. Frankly, she makes this really
great point that when we let kids trigger treat, we
let them confront danger like on their own, and it's real,

(33:36):
it's just a thin the narrowest margin of danger. I mean,
people always talk about like the um, you know, all
like the worst things that could happen on Halloween when
the kids out of trigger treating, getting hit by a car,
getting kidnapped by a stranger, getting like, um, yes, just
just stuff that it happens, and it can happen, It's true,
but it happens so infrequently that the chain its is

(34:00):
are it's not going to happen, and you're actually better
off just letting the kid roll the dice. Because, as
Lenora skanas He puts it, when when you go trick
or treating, you're transitioning from being a kid to a
grown up and you're doing this quite literally. Um, you
go with your parents first, and they kind of teach
you the rules of the road, like just take one
piece of candy, or that house over there has their

(34:22):
lights off, so leave them alone. They don't want to
have anything to do with this. And then after that
you let them go on their own right, and they
kind of take the ball and roll with it. And
she says that, Um, that when they're all trick or
treating kids dressed like grown ups, they take to the
streets night, they encounter the scariest possible locals, which is
in goblins, and then yes, they're doing it as scaries

(34:45):
as possible time night and the whole thing is dress
rehearsal for adulthood, and that like that's the benefit of
trick or treating. I don't quite get that that is
the same as adulthood. Like you and I all the
time walking around night fighting goblins in a way, right
exact where would we have been without trick or treating
to preparis for fighting goblins? But just confronting fears are

(35:06):
on their own without their parents managing their world for
them so that they can handle themselves, have the confidence
to know they can handle themselves and um, and and
I guess feel good about having confronted their fears and
gotten candy in return. Let's not forget about that now.
On the other hand, it's just just take the candies. Fine,

(35:28):
Mommy and Daddy made it perfect for you. All you
have to do is go get the candy. You're in
a perfect bubble and everything's fine. Yeah. So that's I
kind of tend to fall on Leonore Skanazis side on that. Well,
should we talk a little bit about the um, you know,
whether or not there have been all these real horror
stories over the years, and whether or not any of

(35:48):
those are true as far as the razor blade in
the apple and stuff like that, hypodermic needles and candy. Um,
the stuff doesn't happen. No. And the thing to point out,
and I know we've talked about it before, is that
it was a an urban legend that came true. Right. Uh,
there was one case and this is actually kind of

(36:08):
funny if he asked me. In nine there was a
dentist in California named WILLIAMS. Shine who uh it, took
alo laxative pills and disguised them as candy and give
out four and fifty of them jerk two kids, and
they were all poop. And I guess so I think
a fume did poop. Nobody got injured, though right now

(36:29):
you're not gonna get injured from a laxative over poop,
over poop. But this is when I think this real
story got out. And then all of a sudden he
gets morphed into needles and razor blades or poison or
candy laced with heroin and stuff like that. Well that
did happen. Well, yeah, but that's the thing, Like the

(36:52):
examples that are listed are reverse engineered almost right, right,
So there was a little boy in Texas who died
from eating a cyanide um laced pixie stick in Texas,
and I can't remember what you and um. It turned
out that it was his dad. That his dad was
the scum of the earth who had taken taken out

(37:14):
insurance policies on his own children and then gave them
spiked Halloween candy to make it look like some mad
poison or he killed his kids so he could collect
insurance and one of his kids did die, but it
was it wasn't just some random Halloween poisoner that guy
didn't really exist at the time. Yeah, nineteen seventy in
Detroit was the heroin incident. Um, this kid overdose, these

(37:38):
kids ate their uncle's stash, is what really happened. And
then the uncles like, oh, crap, let me sprinkle the
heroin on the candy and cook up the story and
maybe cook up some heroin right since I'm cooking, and uh,
to try and get out of this. So again, it
really happened, but not in the way that you think. Um,

(37:59):
the thing that out everybody, So that Williams Shine guy,
who I just think is a skull for that because
he scared the pants off of America's parents. He basically said, hey, hey,
you know how you're letting your kids run free. Something
really bad had happened to him, and I just showed
you how. And from the that that next year on,
the parents were anxiously involved in Halloween like they never

(38:20):
have been before because of Williams Shine. But um, the
the thing that really killed Halloween, or at least cementuted.
I think the anxieties in the heads of parents in
America is that Thailand all poisoner canceled Halloween two almost
drove Ben Cooper costumes out of business, candy sales went down.

(38:43):
Trick or treated, well, your parents didn't love you. I
think I did too. I don't remember not I would
remember not trick or treating one year, because that would
have been eleven. That's prime time. Apparently those are the
retirement years. But all of this stuff added a veneer
of fear and anxiety on trick or treating for parents,

(39:04):
not for kids necessarily, but for parents, and it drew
them into what was possibly just a kid run activity
because of fear, probably irrational fear. And now you have
to this day, the f d A sending out guidelines
around Halloween saying don't let your kids eat any candy
until they bring it home, which is just torture, and

(39:27):
you have to inspect it and if you see any
pinholes or terrors or anything that looks weird, just thrown away.
Some hospitals say bring your kids candy and well X
ray to see if there's any razor blades or needles
in it or something like that. This is the kind
of terror that ironically is overlaid on Halloween. It's like
fun terror has actual real terror on top of it,

(39:48):
which makes it less fun. We don't inspect candy. Oh
you don't you roll the dice? Huh, yeah, that's great.
I don't know anyone who does. Really. Oh man was
raised like that? You inspected candy? Oh yeah, my parents
were serious about it. We never did. I don't now.
I just I don't know. Maybe it's that thing of

(40:10):
like if you're the because it doesn't happen, right, I'm no,
I'm hardened to hear that. Yeah, because when we did
our Free Range Kids episode, I remember thinking, like, what's
what's going on now? Like like kids are treated like this,
They're not by Halloween candy. It's just not happening, you know.
Plus in our neighborhood, with the sanctioned closure, all the

(40:33):
candy is, people aren't buying their own candy. It's like
the neighborhood buys all the candy and they congregated in
these couple of blocks. Yeah, okay, I mean, there could
be a madman living among us. It happens, but that's
like being scared to walk out your front door for
fear of being murdered, right right, Chuck, You know you

(40:53):
just can't live that way. I can't live that way,
you know. Umi told me a story about a village
like villages in Japan and have like a festival or
two every year, like the whole community comes out. It's
like a big deal. And there was one village, a
little tiny town where um, this one woman just I guess,
went mad and poison the curry that you brought to

(41:14):
the village thing and killed a bunch of townspeople. It happens.
It does happen. But you're right. You can't not eat
the curry just because of the small, small chance that
some mad person has poisoned it. Yeah. The way I
look at it is if that that's what happens, then
that's you know, your numbers up, your numbers up in

(41:35):
your story in the newspaper to scare other people. You
get to be immortalized on stuff. You should know. It's
trick or treat. Going away, Josh, I don't know, Chuck,
I say, no, Okay, that's good. I'm glad to hear that,
because again I'm living hashtag condo life. I'm out of
the action. Yeah, I mean, there's this the last bit
of this article you sent talked about it, um going

(41:57):
away potentially, But I just I don't think that's ever
ever going to happen. So what are your arguments for
it going away that it might my arguments or is
my observations your observations? Um. One of the big ones
is that fear among parents that helicopter parenting has not
been good for trick or treating. Okay, but but think

(42:18):
about that's a real struggle going on right now over
parenting versus under parenting, which one is gonna win out? Okay.
Another one is there's a perception that that trick or
treating is dying out, which is kind of funny. Yes,
because people are moving back into towns and gentrifying those towns,
like we talked about in the Historic District episode, Um,

(42:41):
and as they're doing that. Trick or treating was never
huge in the city, and so people who are raising
the suburbs and were used to are moving into the
city and there's no trick or treating going on anymore.
So I guess trick or treating is dying because that's
what I'm seeing a differ. I beg to differ with
that too, Okay, but I mean, you don't live in
the city city, you live in a neighborhood. Yeah, But

(43:03):
that's all Atlanta is is a bunch of neighborhoods. Okay,
you mean I don't live downtown. Maybe these people live
in Des Moines. I don't know. No one lives in
downtown Atlanta. No, it's true, although it has gotten cooler
than it was like a decade ago. But I beg
to differ that trick or treating doesn't go on in
the cities. I think I think their apartment buildings in
New York where people trick or treat, like, just because

(43:23):
it's not the picket fence suburban neighborhood. I think trick
or treating goes on everywhere. But this author at my house,
Julie Beck, who wrote in The Atlantic, she put it
really well that that basically the suburbs and trick or
treating just go hand in hand. Sure, like the suburbs
are set up for trick or treating. You've got houses
that are close together, super safe, Um yep, where people

(43:46):
who live there are just well enough off to to
buy enough candy for the whole neighborhood. Yeah. Um, they
all have kids. They know each other enough that you're
not embarrassed for your kid to go up in trick
or treat there. And you know that it's this candy
is not going to be poisoned. In the city, you're
much um more uh isolated from one another, even though
you're living on top of one another. Yeah, and I

(44:07):
think maybe if if we're talking about like UH areas
where there are poor kids and where poverty is run rampant,
then maybe there's less traditional trick or treating, but there
are programs and parties and things they try to do
for those kids too. Okay, so those very things may
end up being what kills trick or treating that I

(44:27):
should say, the purest version of trick or treating. You
can also just make the case, well that's what it's
evolving into, and just go with it. I think it
will probably be both. But you're talking about the big
Halloween parties, community parties, trunk or treating, trunk or treating,
or what's it called Halloween, Halloween tailgating, trunk treating. This
is the idea that you and we had this at

(44:50):
our school. We had the Halloween festival, but that did
not replace trick or treating. Okay, this replaces trick or
treating for a lot of children. Yeah, So you go
out and get in a big church parking lot essentially,
and you have uh, bobbing for apples and the dunk tank.
This is different and huh this is a little different
than that. Well, I mean I've seen these in person,

(45:12):
and uh, okay, but that's a Halloween festival you're talking about.
No, No No, I'm talking about instead of trick or treating.
It's a big party where they have candy and they
have activities and games and stuff. So are you going
from car to car getting candy like the cars or houses?
Uh no, not necessarily, but they're giving out candy. I mean,

(45:33):
I can you're not talking about trunker treating. It feels
very nitpicky to me. No, but it's not. And here's
why I'm not talking about Halloween festival though. Okay, that's fine,
that's fine, But you're not talking about trunk or treating either.
You mean you walk five ft to a car and
they give you candy, then five ft to another and
they say, don't play any games, don't bob for apples,
or don't do anything else. All you're doing is walking

(45:53):
to cars. I'm not saying that they don't have bobbing
for apples, but the purpose of trunk or treating is
to basically set up a safe ring of cars where
the kids are literally penned in. The kids who used
to be the ones who we're running the show are
now penned in by the anxious adults cars handing out
candy rather than going to houses, walking around a church

(46:15):
parking lot for trunk or treating instead of trick or treating.
These are not the kids who could pull what the
kids in the goonies did were able to pull off
because they had freedom and spark. That kids who trunk
or treat are being denied that as Let me go
back to my friend Leonora Sknazi. She says, the trunk
or treating is just another adult led activity, one that

(46:38):
reinforces the community killing idea that kids aren't ever safe
outside the home, school or supervised program. And that is
most definitely the message that kids get when they're trunk
or treating. Yeah, I think that is not going to
kill trick or treating or take over trick or treating.
We'll see, Chuck. I hope you're right, because one thing

(46:59):
I have not seen since I've lived in Atlanta is
any big trunk or treating. Well, that's because you live
in Atlanta. All you have to do is go out
to the suburbs, and they're everywhere. But the suburbs are
made for trick or treating. They're out in the neighborhoods.
I gotta end on a quote I ran across a
a website, I guess a church website that's talking about

(47:22):
trunk or treating. It's awesome this quote. It says that
the scariest part about the night this is a trunk
or treating night, isn't the costumes. It's the possibility that
you could miss out on the chance to use trunk
or treat to build relationships and reach these kids with
the gospel. Well yeah, that's the opposite of what Halloween
is all about. That's right. Um, you got anything else,

(47:44):
it's about arson of it. Sorry, I'm one of those
curmudgeons that turns out. Uh. One more thing. If you
like Halloween, go on to our old stuff you should
Know website and search Halloween and creepy and you're gonna
find some amazing slide shows we put together over the year.

(48:04):
Remember that one of my favorite is um cute and
cruddy Halloween costumes, vintage Halloween costumes that are really creepy.
Best Jack lanards, all sorts of great stuff. Remember those
days where we account page views and get excited about that. Yeah,
this one felt like a bit of a tirade? Yeah
was it? I don't think so? Okay, Kim, Well, if

(48:25):
you want to know more about Halloween, get out there
and trick your treat. And since I said that as
time for listener, ma'am. Uh this is follow up on
Paraphelia's that we wanted to read for the last few weeks.
Just now get into it. Hey guys, a long time listener,
first time writer. I've had this episode pop up a
few times. It's just been on my mind. I'm an

(48:47):
r N with M s N and background and have
background in neuro physiology who enjoys studying abnormal psych I
understand you were doing a show on psychological term on
a psychological term, but you may have ended up painting
wrong ideas onto certain practices, specifically S and M and
cross dressing. Um. From when I have come to note,

(49:08):
it's extremely rare that people practice these primarily for sexual gratification.
Of course, these practices are adult in nature, but most
regard it as an emotional practice or exploration of self.
For example, Uh, shabari or rope bondage takes hundreds of
hours of practice to perform, and those that partake describe

(49:28):
a meditation like state as a result, though most would
say it's s and M. Most cross dressers describe the
long process of becoming female as cathartic and self affirming,
although be it uh temporary. Simplifying cross dressers to those
who walk around in high heels to reach completion, well,
imagine saying that about a trans woman. Of course, if

(49:49):
you were doing these practices for sexual gratification, all the
power to you. I suggest you look into keenk culture
as an episode. It's where a wide range of people
congregate and share their interest in a commun any that
has founded off respect and consent their meetups and presentations
on practices so that others can learn proper technique. The
most that practice would like to keep their privacy. And

(50:10):
that is from Anonymous. Thanks a lot, Anonymous, that was
a good correction email. That's right. If you want to
get in touch with us like Anonymous did to set
us straight, we love that kind of thing. You can
join us at stuff you Should Know dot com and
check out our social links there and you can send
us an email to stuff podcast at i heeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of

(50:35):
iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts for my
heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,