Halloween Fact or Fiction

​What's a spooky story, myth, or legend you've heard before?

In the 1500–1600s, people believed powdered mummies contained healing powers. Apothecaries actually sold it as medicine!

By Emily Earp

The tradition began with turnip and potato lanterns in the UK and Ireland. When the tradition came to North America, they switched to the more readily available and easier-to-carve pumpkin!

By Emily Earp

While people did believe in scattering things to deter a vampire, it was poppy seeds or sand, not mustard seeds, that the creature would supposedly be compelled to stop and count.

By Emily Earp

"Souling" involved people singing and offering prayers for the dead in exchange for "soul cakes." This, along with the Scottish and Irish custom of guising (going door-to-door in costume), helped evolve into the trick-or-treating we know today.

By Emily Earp

Records from 15th and 16th-century witch trials suggest that certain hallucinogenic herbs were absorbed transdermally (through the skin) using a stick or tool handle—a possible origin for the common image of the flying witch.

By Emily Earp

Black cats were actually revered in ancient Egypt, seen as sacred to the goddess Bastet. The negative association began in the Middle Ages in Europe, linking them to witchcraft and the devil.

By Emily Earp

There is no scientific evidence to support the idea that the moon's phase affects human behavior or causes a werewolf transformation. The legend simply associates the full moon with the creatures due to its illumination and eerie atmosphere.

By Emily Earp

While Washington Irving's 1820 story is fiction, the Horseman's origins are rooted in a local tale. Historical records, including the memoir of an American general, mention a Hessian artilleryman whose head was taken off by a cannonball during the Battle of White Plains (not far from Sleepy Hollow) in 1776. Irving blended this historical event with European folklore to create his famous ghost story.

By Emily Earp