Happy Halloween

[Rasputin]

Halloween is an observance celebrated on the night of October 31, most notably by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting sweets. It is celebrated in much of the Western world, though most common in Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and with increasing popularity in Australia, and sometimes celebrated in New Zealand. Halloween originated among the Celts in Ireland, Britain and Franceas the Pagan Celtic harvest festival, Samhain. Irish, Scots and other immigrants brought versions of the traditions to North America in the 19th century. Most other Western countries have embraced Halloween as a part of American pop culture in the late 20th century.

The term Halloween, and its older spelling Hallowe'en, is shortened from All-hallow-even, as it is the evening before "All Hallows' Day"(also known as "All Saints' Day"). In Ireland, the name was All Hallows' Eve (often shortened to Hallow Eve), and though seldomly used today, it is still a well accepted label. Halloween was also sometimes called All Saints' Eve. The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions, until it was appropriated by Christian missionaries and given a Christian interpretation. Halloween is also called Pooky Night in some parts of Ireland, presumably named after the púca, a mischievous spirit.

Halloween is sometimes associated with the occult. Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when the spiritual world can make contact with the physical world and when magic is most potent (e.g. Catalan mythology about witches, Irish tales of the Sídhe).

Symbols

The imagery surrounding Hallowe'en is largely an amalgamation of the Hallowe'en season itself, nearly a century of work from American filmmakers and graphic artists, and a rather commercialized take on the dark,diaria and mysterious. This art generally involves death, magic, or mythical monsters. Commonly-associated Hallowe'en characters include ghosts, aliens, ghouls, witches, bats, owls, crows, vultures, haunted houses, pumpkinmen, black cats, spiders, goblins, zombies, mummies, skeletons, werewolves, and demons. Particularly in America, symbolism is inspired by classic film, such as fictional figures like Dracula and Frankenstein's monster in the vein of Boris Karloff and Alfred Hitchcock. Homes are often decorated with these symbols around Hallowe'en.

Black and orange are the traditional colors of Hallowe'en. In modern Hallowe'en images and products, purple, green, and red are also prominent.

The use of these colors is largely a result of advertising for the holiday that dates back for over a century. They tend to be associated with various parts of Hallowe'en's imagery.

Elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins and scarecrows, are also reflected in symbols of Halloween.

The carved jack-o'-lantern, lit by a candle inside, is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols. Although there is a tradition in the British Isles of carving a lantern from a rutabaga, mangelwurzel, or turnip, the practice was first named and associated with Halloween in North America, where the pumpkin was available, and much larger and easier to carve. Many families that celebrate Halloween carve a pumpkin into a frightening or comical face and place it on their home's doorstep after dark.

[Rasputin]

Trick-or-treating and guising

The main event of modern US-style Halloween is trick-or-treating, in which children dress up in costume disguises and go door-to-door in their neighborhood, ringing each doorbell and yelling "trick or treat!" Although this resembles the older tradition of guising in Ireland and Scotland, ritual begging on Halloween does not appear in English-speaking America until the 20th century, and may have developed independently. The occupants of the house (who might themselves dress in a scary costume) will then hand out small candies, miniature chocolate bars, and sometimes even soda pop. Some American homes will use sound effects and fog machines to help set a spooky mood. Other house decoration themes (that are less scary) are used to entertain younger visitors. Children can often accumulate many treats on Halloween night, filling up entire pillow cases or shopping bags.

In Ireland, great bonfires were lit throughout the breadth of the land. Young children in their guises were gladly received by the neighbors with some "fruit, apples and nuts and of course sweets" for the "Halloween Party", whilst older male siblings played innocent pranks on bewildered victims.

In Scotland, children or guisers are more likely to recite "The sky is blue, the grass is green, may we have our Halloween" instead of "trick or treat!". They visit neighbours in groups and must impress the members of the houses they visit with a song, poem, trick, joke or dance in order to earn their treats. Traditionally, nuts, oranges, apples and dried fruit were offered, though sometimes children would also earn a small amount of cash, usually a sixpence. Very small children often take part, for whom the experience of performing can be more terrifying than the ghosts outside.

Tricks play less of a role in modern Halloween, though Halloween night is often marked by vandalism such as soaping windows, egging houses or stringing toilet paper through trees. Before indoor plumbing was so widespread, tipping over or displacing outhouses was a popular form of intimidation. Casting flour into the faces of feared neighbors was also done once upon a time.

Typical Halloween costumes have traditionally been monsters such as vampires, ghosts, witches, and devils. In recent years, it has become common for costumes to be based on themes other than traditional horror, such as dressing up as a character from a TV show or movie, or choosing a recognizable face from the public sphere, such as a politician (in 2004, for example, George W. Bush and John F. Kerry were both popular costumes in America). In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, for example, costumes of Islamic terrorists, firefighters, police officers, and United States military personnel became popular among children and adults. In 2004, an estimated 2.15 million children in the United States were expected to dress up as Spider-Man, the year's most popular costume.

"'Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF" has become a common sight during Halloween in North America. Started as a local event in a Philadelphia suburb in 1950, and expanded nationally in 1952, the program involves the distribution of small boxes by schools to trick-or-treaters, in which they can solicit small change donations from the houses they visit. It is estimated that children have collected more than $119 million for UNICEF since its inception.

BIGresearch conducted a survey for the National Retail Federation in the US and found that 53.3% of consumers planned to buy a costume for Halloween 2005, spending $38.11 on average (up 10 dollars from last year). An estimate of $3.3 billion was made for the holiday spending.

A child usually "grows out of" trick-or-treating by his or her teenage years. Trick-or-treating by teenagers is accepted, but generally discouraged with genial ribbing by those handing out candy. Teenagers and adults instead often celebrate Halloween with costume parties, bonfire parties, staying home to give out candy, listening to Halloween music, watching horror movies or scaring people.

Visiting a haunted house or a dark attraction are other Halloween traditions. Notwithstanding the name, such events are not necessarily held in houses, nor are the edifices themselves necessarily regarded to possess actual ghosts. A variant of this is the haunted trail, where the public encounters supernatural-themed characters or presentations of scenes from horror films while following a trail through a heavily wooded area or field. One of the largest Halloween attractions in the U.S.A. is Knott's Scary Farm in California, which features re-themed amusement park rides and a dozen different walkthrough mazes, plus hundreds of costumed roving performers. Film studios often release horror films on or around the holiday in hopes of attracting people in search of scary entertainment. Recent examples include Saw (and its sequels), a director's cut of Ridley Scott's Alien, The Grudge 2 and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel.

[Rasputin]

Games and other activities

There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween parties. The most common is dooking or bobbing for apples, in which apples float in a tub or a large basin of water; the participants must use their teeth to remove an apple from the basin. A variant involves kneeling on a chair, holding a fork between the teeth and trying to drop the fork into an apple. Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings; these must be eaten without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity which inevitably leads to a very sticky face.

Some games traditionally played at Halloween are forms of divination. In Puicíní (pronounced "pooch-eeny"), a game played in Ireland, a blindfolded person is seated in front of a table on which several saucers are placed. The saucers are shuffled and the seated person then chooses one by touch. The contents of the saucer determine the person's life for the following year. A saucer containing earth means someone known to the player will die during the next year, a saucer containing water foretells travel, a coin means new wealth, a bean means poverty, etc. In 19th-century Ireland, young women placed slugs in saucers sprinkled with flour. The wriggling of the slugs and the patterns subsequently left behind on the saucers were believed to portray the faces of the women's future spouses.

In North America, unmarried women were frequently told that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. However, if they were destined to die before they married, a skull would appear. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The telling of ghost stories and viewing of horror films are common fixtures of Halloween parties. Television specials with a Halloween theme, usually aimed at children, are commonly aired on or before the holiday while new horror films are often released theatrically before the holiday to take advantage of the atmosphere.

[Rasputin]

Foods

Because the holiday comes in the wake of the annual apple harvest, Candy Apples (also known as toffee, taffy or caramel apples) are a common treat at Halloween. They are made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, and sometimes then rolling them in nuts. At one time candy apples were a common treat given to children, but this practice rapidly waned after widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor blades in the apples that they would pass out to children. While there is evidence of such incidents occurring they are very rare and have never resulted in any serious injuries. Nonetheless, many parents were under the assumption that the practice was common. At the peak of this hysteria, some hospitals were offering to x-ray children's Halloween haul at no cost in order to look for such items. Almost all of the very few Halloween candy poisoning incidents on record involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy, while there are occasional reports of children sticking needles in their own candy (and that of other children) more in an effort to get attention than cause any harm.

A Halloween custom which has survived unchanged to this day in Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays the purchase) of a barmbrack (Irish "báirín breac"). This is a light fruit cake into which a plain ring is placed before baking. It is said that whoever finds this ring will find his or her true love during the following year. See also King cake

Other foods associated with the holiday:

candy corn
bonfire toffee (in the UK)
Toffee Apple (in Australia and Scotland, instead of "Candy Apples")
hot apple cider
roasted or popped corn
roasted pumpkin seeds
pumpkin pie
"fun-sized" or individually wrapped pieces of small candy, typically in Halloween colors of orange, and brown/black.
novelty candy shaped like skulls, pumpkins, bats, worms, etc.

[Rasputin]

Halloween traditions

Halloween traditions survive most accurately on the island of Ireland, where the last Monday of October is a public holiday. All schools close for the following week for mid-term, commonly called the Halloween Break. As a result Ireland and Northern Ireland are the only countries where children never have school on Halloween and are therefore free to celebrate it in the ancient and time-honored fashion.

The custom of trick-or-treating resembles the European custom called souling, similar to the wassailing customs associated with Yule. On November 2, All Souls' Day, beggars would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes" — square pieces of bread with currants. Christians would promise to say prayers on behalf of dead relatives helping the soul's passage to heaven. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits at the Samhain.

Further information: Puck (mythology)
Souling died out in most areas of England by the mid-17th century, during the Protestant Reformation. There is no evidence that souling was ever practiced in North America, and trick-or-treating seems to have evolved there independently: the earliest report of ritual begging on Halloween is from 1915, and it did not become a widespread practice until the 1930s. Ritual begging on Halloween did not appear in the British Isles until the late 20th century, and imitates the American custom.

In Celtic parts of western Brittany, Samhain is still heralded by the baking of kornigou. Kornigou are cakes baked in the shape of antlers to commemorate the god of winter shedding his "cuckold" horns as he returns to his kingdom in the Otherworld.

In the Isle of Man where Halloween is known as Hop-tu-Naa children carry turnips instead of pumpkins, and sing a song called Jinnie the Witch.

[Rasputin]

How to Make a Halloween Dummy

Halloween's getting closer and you're digging decorations out of storage. If you want to add something new to your collection, there's no better place to start than with a perfect porch Dummy!

Steps

Get a "Jibber Jabber" red hair doll. There are several of them listed on eBay. The idea behind the "Jibber Jabber" doll is to give your dummy the appearance of a character from the movie "Beetle Juice" that has a shrunken head.

Lay the pants out on the bed and stuff them with old sheets or clothes. Follow the same step with the shirt.
Stuff the shirt down inside the pants. Then, carefully un-button the shirt and safety pin the shirt to the pants and button it back up. Be sure that pins are not showing on the outside.

Sit the dummy in the chair where you want it to go. Put it in an up-right position.

Clear or (hollow out) a spot on the inside (neck area) of the shirt (down to the chest area) for the "Jibber Jabber" doll to go, and add the doll in. Once this is all done, the stuffing can be re-secured around the "Jibber Jabber" doll. The head and neck area only need to be showing, along with the cute neck tie. Be sure that the neck area looks well rounded, but that no stuffing or material is showing. Press it all down inside the dummy's collar.

Give the dummy gloves, pulling them over the bottom of the shirt sleeves. Put the boots on the dummy by tucking the pants' legs inside the boots; then position the dummy any way that you want.

Have the head of the "Jibber Jabber" doll facing in the direction that the children will be approching the porch. He will be a delightful welcome for the kiddies.



Tips

Have on hand a small table or a place to prop one of the dummy's feet on after positioning it in a chair. Cross one of its legs over the other, giving it a relaxed look.

Western boots are highly recommended for the dummy. However, work boots will suffice for this project.

Any special effects that you may wish to add such as pens in the pocket, by all means, do it. Be creative. You may even want it to appear as though the dummy is holding something.

A pot of candy can be placed on a small patio table next to the dummy.

If you want for the dummy to have a bigger belly, add a small pillow.

Be sure that your porch area is well-lit so that your dummy can be seen.



Warnings

Be sure to carefully handle the Dummy while positioning it in the chair, for the back of the Dummy's clothing will not have safety pins, only the front.



Things You'll Need

Jibber Jabber doll - (see photo above)
an old pair of pants
a long sleeve man's button up shirt
pair of boots
set of men's gloves
newspapers
greensheets or old clothes - for stuffing the pants and shirt
safety pins
porch chair - to sit the dummy
lots of imagination

[golgol85]

I want to do something fun for halloween this year since its after the worst week of school

[Rasputin]

I like Halloween for his traditions and history :=) .

[donsaeid]

halloween is a commercial thing as Valentine day! with that i like idea behind valentine day but i dont like halloween! and actually i heard halloween is a day to visit grave of your dead loved ones! here in norway they call it santaften! and also joking and laughing about things you dont know about and know their powers like ghosts and spirites i simply stupid

[Rasputin]

Is correct what said Mr DonSaeid but this is an old tradition and everybody is following it for each year ! personally,i like it just for his legends and histories !

[Rasputin]

How to Make Pumpkin Pie Straight from the Pumpkin

Have you ever wanted to make pumpkin pie straight from a pumpkin, rather than from a can? Here's how to turn a fresh pumpkin into a delicious pie.



Ingredients

1 Sugar Pumpkin (approximately 6" in diameter)
2 Frozen Pie Crusts
4 Large Eggs
1 cup (250ml) Milk or Cream
1/2 cup (~110g) Sugar
Ground Cinnamon
Ground Nutmeg

Steps

Cut a round cap around the stem and pop it off.

Peel the tough outer skin of the pumpkin with a sharp knife. Or, another way to remove the skin easily is to wait until after you have boiled the squares of pumpkin (step 5); the skin comes off much more easily after this.
Scoop out the stringy insides and seeds.

Cut the remaining outer shell into squares.
Boil the squares uncovered until they're soft (the smaller the squares, the faster they'll cook). The longer you cook, the thicker the resulting texture of the baked pie and the stronger the flavor.
Place the squares into a blender with milk, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg to taste. This will become your filling.
Prepare two bowls, putting a cup's worth of filling in each.
Add two eggs to each bowl and mix.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit (190 Celsius, Gas Mark 5).
Transfer the filling from the two bowls to two pie crusts.
Sprinkle gently with cinnamon.
Wrap the pie crust edges in foil so that they don't burn.
Put the two pies in the oven for 45 minutes. Make sure they are on the same rack. If one gets more heat than the other, you'll end up with one burnt pie and one uncooked one. Check on your pies after 30 minutes, to avoid burning.
Let them cool at room temperature before eating. Refrigerate leftovers.



Tips
Line the pie crusts with a layer of thin apple slices sprinkled with cinnamon before pouring in the filling to mix things up.
Sprinkle a teaspoon cumin powder on top of the pie before placing it in the oven for a dramatic flavor.
As an alternative method, instead of boiling and peeling, cut the pumpkin in half at the equator. Scoop the seeds and strings, then place each half cut side down on a sheet pan in a 375 degree (190 Celsius, Gas Mark 5) oven until it is soft and a fork pierces it easily. Let it cool and scoop out the pumpkin, leaving the skin behind.
Another alternative is to cut the pumpkin in half, scoop out seeds and fill part way with water before placing on a sheet pan and proceeding as above.



Warnings

Handle the pies carefully when you're removing them from the oven, as they will be hot.

[Rasputin]

Have a Great Halloween Party for Adults

Here are my ideas for pulling off a great Halloween party! You may celebrate this as Samhain, a pagan festival. There are big differences, and this is a halloween party for FUN!



Steps


Choose the mood. It should be dark and dreary. Decorate by draping black cloths over the furniture and lighting candles, don't use any real lights. If you need black cloth, just buy some old bed sheets from a thrift store and dye them black.
Invite people by phone for a small party. For a big party, use invitations that are black and creepy. Use a font like chiller, or one that looks like it is dripping blood.
Food is the most important aspect of any party. If you mess up everywhere else and have good food, people will enjoy themselves. Have bloody popcorn: put red food coloring mixed with butter on the popcorn. If you have punch, have it in a hollowed out pumpkin. You can get a block of dry ice and set that underneath the food table so it will look like a spooky fog is in the room. Serve deviled eggs, but with green olives stuffed with pimentos to look like eyes. Use your imagination!
Serve alcoholic drinks (a mix-your-own type - have the recipes out for people to mix, or make jugs) such as Bloody nightmares, Blood Caesars, Bloody Marys, Black Magic, White Witch, Zombie etc. There are lots!
Have spooky music, or music by someone like Rob Zombie, who does good music for something like that.



Tips

Ask people to dress up. It is a lot more fun. This way you can also give a theme to your party, and that will also help you set the mood (if you don't want it as spooky/scary). Themes could be underworld, Victorian-era, or old west... anything, really!
If people are drinking, take their car keys and call them a cab, or let them sleep over. Be a responsible host.



Warnings

Be very careful with the dry ice! It can burn you.

[Parinaz_M]

some people just go too far with this thing.
en hamsaye ma enghad be daro divare khoonash chiz miz avizoon karde ke dige divarash maloom nist

[Rasputin]

Ghost Story

Ghost ships, in the mythology of the sea, are almost as plentiful as barnacles on a rock.

One of the most celebrated is the phantom schooner of Harpswell which was seen by many people, usually in the late afternoon, fully rigged and under sail; a breathtaking sight, though apt to vanish without warning in a shimmer of light or a sudden rising of fog. This vision has been immortalized in the poem The Dead Ship of Harpswell, by John Greenleaf Whittier, whose opening lines are as follows: What flecks the outer gray beyond The sundown's golden trail? The white flash of a sea-bird's wing, Or gleam of slanting sail?

The period around 1812 was a splendid time for industrious young men to make a legitimate fortune on the high seas. A couple of boys barely into their twenties could prosper trading cod and lumber for the rum, molasses and coffee of the Indies, which was precisely the career George Leverett and Charles Jose envisioned when they set out from Portland, Maine. Their destination was the Soule Boatyard in South Freeport and their mission was to arrange for the building of their own new vessel.

However, shortly after arriving in South Freeport they met the lovely Sarah Soule, fell violently in love with her, and out of sorts with each other. Perhaps because of his Portuguese blood, Jose pursued her more hotly, though in the end it was George Leverett she preferred. After a bitter argument, during which Charles tried to hurl George into the Royal River, the friendship between the two men ended. Charles disappeared and George proceeded with construction of the ship. When she was finished, he appropriately named her Sarah and prepared for his wedding to Sarah Soule.

Ill fortune arose on every side. At first there were strange obstacles in the wedding preparations. Then Captain Leverett found it oddly difficult to line up a crew. Still, he was a determined young man and, at last, with his bride in his house and a crew on his ship, Leverett sailed into Portland harbor to take on cargo for the West Indies. At the same time, there arrived a curious black craft which flew no flag and was outfitted with cannon. The ship was the Don Pedro Salazar and her captain was none other than Leverett's former partner and romantic rival, Charles Jose.

Much like a storm cloud on the horizon, the Don Pedro trailed the Sarah south. As the voyage progressed the Sarah's crew grew more and more uneasy and petitioned Captain Leverett to head for Nassau to report the menacing pursuer to the British Admiralty. He never reached the harbor. As soon as the Don Pedro saw what course Leverett was taking, she opened fire, killing all but Leverett and severely damaging, though through some miracle, not sinking the unarmed Sarah.

Still blinded by jealousy and seeking murderous revenge, Jose could have tortured the survivor in a variety of traditional methods. However, Jose, after looting the ship, chose only to tie Leverett to the foot of the Sarah's mainmast and head him out to sea.

It was then that Leverett experienced an extraordinary phenomenon. Helpless as he was and facing certain death and destruction on an unmanned and shattered vessel, he still was possessed by a strange notion that the ship was under control. Indeed the dead crew began to rise up and take their posts one by one. Sails were set and the ship's course was turned toward home. Captain Leverett, at this point, understandably lost consciousness.

On a bleak November day people on Potts' Point saw a fully rigged yet tragic wreck sailing with uncanny accuracy along the unmarked channel. Suddenly the ship came to a full stop without benefit of an anchor. A pale and silent crew lowered an apparently unconscious man into a boat, rowed him ashore and laid him on a rock, his log book beside him. Without even the squeak of an oar-lock, the ghostly sailors returned to the ship just as a heavy fog suddenly blanketed the harbor. When it had lifted the ship was gone. The unconsciousman was soon recognized as George Leverett and it is said that he recovered at least enough to relate this tale, though he surely never went out to sea again.

The last sighting of the Sarah was in the 1880s on a crystaline summer afternoon. A guest seated on the piazza of Harpswell House looked seaward toward the horizon in time to see a wondrous vision.

A great schooner, under full sail, her canvas gilded in the sun, was heading slowly for the harbor. He summoned a friend, but when they looked again the ship had vanished. Believers say that the magnificent wreck and her ghostly crew, weary from wandering, had reached home port for the last time.

[Rasputin]

Shelters ban black cat Halloween adoptions

To this day, superstitious souls fear black cats — once identified with shape-shifting witches and even the devil himself — are bad luck. In a modern-day twist, well-meaning spirits worry that people are particularly cruel to the dusky critters around Halloween, when all sorts of supernatural symbols enter the spotlight. Some humane agencies go so far as to ban black cat adoptions close to the holiday to prevent them from becoming haunted house props or targets of teenage pranks. The Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA is taking the opposite tack by pushing for people to adopt the agency's 16 or so sable felines, which are hard to find homes for during the rest of the year. "It's just perplexing to shelter workers across the country — black cats and dogs stay longer in the shelter than light colored ones," PHS spokesman Scott Delucchi said. "No one knows exactly why." Based partly on tales of supposed satanic sacrifices of the critters, the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals plans a one-week moratorium on black cat adoptions starting Wednesday. "We've seen all kinds. Sometimes people see a dead animal and just assume it was a satanic cult," SPCA LA President Madeline Bernstein said. "Sometimes it's a cat that's been eaten by a coyote." Other times, she said, the agency has heard reports from police of ritual or mock-ritual killings of black cats at Halloween. Legitimating those accounts, however, is elusive. Less sensationally, Bernstein said commercial haunted houses will pick up a cat from a city shelter for about $30 and dump it when business stops. "When you look at the follow-up after the holiday and you look at the number of cats that are returned," she said, "you realize you can be a little bitprophylactic." Delucchi said locally, stories of black cat abuse appear to be just tall tales and worries of mass abandonment after Halloween are equally overblown.



"I don't know that it's really based on anything except fear," he said. "In San Mateo County, we don't see cats turning up Nov. 1 that have been harmed. As far as we know, it hasn't been realized." At the PHS shelter east of Highway 101, would-be adopters pony up $70 and go through up to an hour-long orientation before they become pet owners. Delucchi said it's unlikely someone would go through the screening hassle to snag a black cat for some unsavory short-term use, so the agency puts its faith in its usual adoption process rather than risk throwing up roadblocks between potential pet owners and abandoned animals.