Halloween History Countdown - Day 31

I made it through the whole month, and now Halloween is nearly history. It was a lovely night. We had lots of fun, and I had a great time with my countdown. It's always nice when you do what you set out to do - blog every night for a month!

Our Halloween theme this year was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This is Hogsmeade and the Shrieking Shack (at a distance):


I was Professor Trelawny, complete with a grim at the bottom of the tea cup. More pictures later - our yard was awesome.

Halloween History Countdown - Day 30

Here's one of my favorite spooky legends, with more information from Snopes.com:
Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary!

Legend: Chanting "Bloody Mary!" three times in front of a candlelit mirror will summon a vengeful spirit.

Origins: The research into Bloody Mary goes Come to me . . . back to 1978, when folklorist Janet Langlois published her essay on the legend. Belief in summoning the mirror-witch was even at that time widespread throughout the U.S.

Mary is summoned whenever squealing girls get together for a sleepover, but boys have been known to call on her too. (The 'Bloody Mary' legend was common when I was a kid in the early 1970s. We typically performed the "ritual" in bathrooms, because the bathrooms of our suburban homes had large mirrors and were easily darkened even during the day since they had no windows. A familiar 'Bloody Mary' story was one about a girl who supposedly ended her incantation with a spiteful "I don't believe in Mary Worth," then tripped over the doorjamb while exiting the bathroom and broke her
hip.)

Mary is said to be a witch who was executed a hundred years ago for plying the black arts, or a woman of more modern times who died in a local car accident in which her face was hideously mutilated.

It's possible these "mirror witch" games have their roots in oldtime divining rituals involving unmarried girls and future husbands. There are a number of variations of these divinations, some involving chanting a rhyme in a darkened room on a special night and then quickly looking in the mirror to catch a glimpse of the bridegroom-to-be.

The concept of mirrors as portals between this world and the realm of spirits shows up in other beliefs, namely those surrounding funerals. It was common practice to cover mirrors in a house where a death had occurred until the body was taken for burial. (Back in the days before funeral homes, corpses were washed by the deceased's relatives, dressed in their funeral finery, and laid out in coffins in the front parlor. Consequently, the dead would be in the house for days.) It was believed if the dear departed caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror, his ghost would remain in the house because the mirror would trap his spirit.

Halloween History Countdown - Day 29

I'm posting early because tonight I'll be attending The Denver Witches' Ball! This is the first time I've been, and I'm pretty excited.

From the BBC Wiki:
Black Cats in Every Culture

"One of the earliest associations of black cats with bad luck perhaps comes from ancient Babylonian and Hebrew mythologies. These myths compare the black cat, coiled in a circle as it dozes on the hearth, to a serpent. The serpent in most cultures was considered a purveyor of evils and misfortune.

The Celts thought black cats were reincarnated beings who were able to divine the future and the Normans believed that if a black cat crossed your path in the moonlight, you would die in an epidemic. During the Middle Ages the Germans believed that if a black cat jumped on the bed of a sick person it meant death was approaching and in Finland, black cats were thought to carry the souls of the dead to the other world."

Halloween History Countdown - Day 28

Another spooky word derivation for this 28th day of the month!

From Weird! The Complete Book of Halloween Words by Peter R. Limburg

"Gruesome comes from the Scottish verb, grue, that meant 'to feel horror' or 'to shudder'. Grue was often spelled grow, for people could not agree on how it should be spelled.

At some point during the Middle Ages, the ending some was tacked on to make an adjective. But gruesome remained a provincial word until Sir Walter Scott used it in his novel Old Mortality in 1816. He spelled it grewsome. The modern spelling did not take hold until after 1850."

Halloween History Countdown - Day 27

Another cool Halloween fact:
On this day (10/31), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle, is published. The book was the first collection of Holmes stories, which Conan Doyle had been publishing in magazines since 1887.

Halloween History Countdown - Day 26

From the History Channel - This Day in History:

October 31, 1926
Houdini is dead

Harry Houdini, the most celebrated magician and escape artist of the 20th century, dies of peritonitis in a Detroit hospital. Twelve days before, Houdini had been talking to a group of students after a lecture in Montreal when he commented on the strength of his stomach muscles and their ability to withstand hard blows. Suddenly, one of the students punched Houdini twice in the stomach. The magician hadn't had time to prepare, and the blows ruptured his appendix. He fell ill on the train to Detroit, and, after performing one last time, was hospitalized. Doctors operated on him, but to no avail. The burst appendix poisoned his system, and on October 31 he died."

Halloween History Countdown - Day 25

We've been looking at historical Halloween;now let's look at some Halloweens in history!

From the History Channel website:

On October 31,1517, the priest and scholar Martin Luther approached the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and nailed a piece of paper to it containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Protestant Reformation.