44 Fun Facts About Scary Halloween

Which ancient Celtic festival is considered one of the origins of modern Halloween traditions?

Samhain marked the end of the harvest, when the dead were thought to return home; people lit hilltop bonfires and wore disguises so the ghosts would not recognise them.

What vegetable was originally used to carve jack-o'-lanterns in Ireland?

Turnip lanterns recall Stingy Jack, the trickster of Irish legend sent to roam the night with a burning coal in a carved-out turnip; immigrants to America switched to the native pumpkin.

Which author is credited with writing the novel 'Dracula'?

Bram Stoker wrote Dracula while holding down a day job: the Dublin-born author managed London's Lyceum Theatre for the actor Henry Irving for almost three decades.

The zombie of modern horror comes from the folklore of which Caribbean country?

Haiti's zombie is a corpse revived by a bokor, a sorcerer, to serve as a slave with no will of its own; the belief is thought to have taken shape among enslaved Africans on the island's sugar plantations.

In spiritualism, what substance is believed to be exuded by mediums during séances?

Ectoplasm was named by the physiologist Charles Richet; when investigators examined samples from mediums such as Helen Duncan, they found cheesecloth, paper and egg white.

Halloween is the vigil of which Christian feast day?

All Saints' Day, 1 November, was once called All Hallows, which is why the night before became All Hallow Even, later shortened to Halloween.

Which term names an object, often inscribed with symbols, believed to hold magical power and protect whoever carries it?

A talisman takes its name, by way of Arabic, from a Greek word meaning to consecrate or endow with magic power; medieval handbooks said one had to be made at an astrologically chosen moment.

Which Shakespeare tragedy has three witches chanting 'Double, double toil and trouble' over a bubbling cauldron?

Macbeth was written soon after James I took the English throne; the new king was obsessed with witchcraft and had published his own book on the subject, Daemonologie.

Which Irish Halloween fruitcake is baked with a ring, a coin and other charms hidden inside?

Barmbrack doubles as a fortune-telling game: whoever finds the ring in their slice is said to be next to marry, while the coin promises wealth.

Which film, considered one of the most influential vampire movies, features Count Orlok?

Nosferatu (1922) was an unauthorised Dracula adaptation with the names changed; the novelist's widow sued, and a court ordered every copy destroyed, yet a few prints survived.

How were 19 people convicted in the Salem witch trials put to death?

Hanging was the sentence for all 19, most of them women; in 1711 Massachusetts began clearing the condemned and paid restitution to their heirs.

Which studio's monster series brought Dracula, Frankenstein and the Phantom to the screen in the 1920s and 30s?

Universal Pictures had such a hit with Dracula early in 1931 that it followed with Frankenstein before the year was out.

In British folklore, a black cat crossing your path is traditionally a sign of what?

Good luck is what a black cat on your path means in Britain, the exact reverse of the United States, where the same cat is an ill omen left over from its old association with witches.

The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity are landmark films in which horror subgenre?

Found footage presents a film as recordings its characters left behind; The Blair Witch Project pushed the trick further, with a website treating its three student film-makers as genuinely missing.

Baking and sharing which food door to door at Allhallowtide is a suggested origin of trick-or-treating?

Soul cakes went to the poor and to children who went 'souling' from door to door, promising in return to pray for the souls of the givers' dead relatives.

Which fictional creature is usually depicted as vulnerable to silver and resistant to almost everything else?

The werewolf's silver weakness is often linked to France's Beast of Gévaudan, a wolf-like killer of the 1760s; later storytellers had its hunter load silver bullets.

Which killer, who attacks teenagers in their dreams wearing a striped sweater and bladed glove, stalks A Nightmare on Elm Street?

Freddy Krueger grew out of newspaper reports of refugees who died in their sleep after recurring nightmares; his creator also drew on a bully from his own schooldays.

Count Dracula's surname is thought to derive from the patronymic of which ruler?

Vlad the Impaler was known as Dracula, 'son of Dracul'; the name Dracul, 'the dragon', came from the Order of the Dragon, a brotherhood of Christian knights.

Which 'Master of Suspense' made The Birds in 1963 and turned up in cameos in most of his own films?

Alfred Hitchcock was nominated five times for the Best Director Oscar and never won; the Academy's one award to him was honorary, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1968.

Which 1968 film launched modern zombie movies?

Night of the Living Dead lost its copyright by accident: the distributor changed the title and left the notice off the new prints, so George A. Romero's film went straight into the public domain.

Which horror writer created Pennywise the Dancing Clown and the fictional town of Derry, Maine?

Stephen King traced It to a walk across a wooden bridge that made him think of the troll in 'Three Billy Goats Gruff'; he then imagined the troll in the sewers under a city like Bangor, Maine.

What is a ghost that makes itself known through loud noises and moving or broken objects commonly called?

Poltergeist joins the German poltern, 'to make noise', and Geist, 'ghost'; investigators have traced many famous cases to hoaxes, often a youngster playing tricks on credulous adults.

Which accused man in the 1692 Massachusetts witch trials died under torture for refusing to enter a plea?

Giles Corey, about 80, would not let the court try him, so stones were piled on him until he died; a local tradition, which historians dispute, says he was shielding his farm from seizure.

What iconic mask does the character Jason Voorhees wear in the 'Friday the 13th' film series?

Jason Voorhees only gained the hockey mask in the third film, in 1982; in the film before, he hid his face under a burlap sack.

Which film was the first horror movie nominated for the Best Picture Oscar?

The Exorcist earned ten Oscar nominations and lost Best Picture to The Sting; William Peter Blatty had built his novel on reports of a boy's alleged exorcism in 1949.

Which mythical creature is a harbinger of death, its mournful wailing said to foretell a family member's passing?

The banshee takes her name from the Irish bean sídhe, 'woman of the fairy mound'; she was said to wail only for the old Irish families she had attached herself to.

Frankenstein grew out of an 1816 ghost-story contest proposed by which poet during a rainy Swiss summer?

Lord Byron's guests were kept indoors by the 'Year Without a Summer', the cold, wet aftermath of Mount Tambora's 1815 eruption; Mary Shelley, then 18, answered his challenge with her novel.

Which character wears a white mask and wields a large knife in the "Halloween" film series?

Michael Myers's white mask in the 1978 Halloween was a William Shatner Captain Kirk mask, painted white and bought for under two dollars.

What is the name of the red-haired killer doll, possessed by a serial killer's spirit, in the Child's Play franchise?

Chucky is short for Charles Lee Ray, the strangler whose soul enters the doll; the film-makers built that name from Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray.

Which figure from Washington Irving's 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' pursues Ichabod Crane?

The Headless Horseman is said to be a Hessian trooper who lost his head to a cannonball; Irving hints the rider was really Ichabod's rival Brom Bones, since only a shattered pumpkin is found.

Which of these is a popular Halloween game involving apples floating in water?

Apple bobbing, also known as ducking for apples, is a traditional Halloween game where participants try to catch apples floating in a tub of water using only their teeth.

What type of creature is often depicted as dwelling in graveyards and feeding on corpses?

Ghoul comes from the Arabic ghul, a grave-robbing demon whose name goes back to a verb meaning 'to seize'; the star Algol, 'the ghoul's head', is named after it.

Which horror franchise follows John Kramer, a dying man who builds elaborate traps to test his victims' will to live?

Saw cost about $1.2 million and took more than $100 million worldwide; James Wan and Leigh Whannell had first filmed one trap scene as a short to win over producers.

Halloween crossed the Atlantic in the 1800s with immigrants from Ireland and which other country, home of 'guising'?

Scotland's young 'guisers' went door to door in costume and earned their treats with a song, a poem or a joke, a custom that Scottish and Irish immigrants carried to North America.

Which horror director created the 'Halloween' film series and composed its theme music?

John Carpenter composed and recorded the whole Halloween score himself in just three days; its insistent piano theme is written in an unusual 5/4 time.

Which faceless figure in a black suit began as a 2009 entry in an online Photoshop contest?

Slender Man was created by Eric Knudsen, posting as 'Victor Surge', who added the figure to two doctored photographs of children for a contest on the Something Awful forum.

The Grim Reaper, the robed skeleton who personifies death, traditionally carries which farming tool?

A scythe is the Grim Reaper's tool because he reaps: in stories he arrives as a cloaked skeleton to collect a person's soul, as a farmhand gathers in the crop.

Which doll, kept in a glass case by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, haunts The Conjuring films?

Annabelle is a sinister porcelain doll on screen, but the doll the Warrens displayed in their Connecticut museum is a soft Raggedy Ann.

Which 1941 monster movie starred Lon Chaney Jr. as Larry Talbot, cursed after a bite in Wales?

The Wolf Man never shows or mentions a full moon; that famous rule only arrived with the 1943 sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.

Which occult item was patented as a 'toy or game'?

The Ouija board won its 1891 patent, the story goes, only after a patent officer demanded proof: he asked the board to spell out his name, and it is said to have obliged.

What is the name of the ancient practice of attempting to communicate with the dead?

Necromancy combines the Greek for 'corpse' and 'divination': the dead were raised to reveal the future, as when King Saul has a medium at Endor call up the prophet Samuel.

Which horror film is known for its iconic shower scene, accompanied by screeching violin music?

Psycho has an all-strings score because Bernard Herrmann ignored the director's request for jazz; the shower scene itself was storyboarded by the title designer Saul Bass.

Which horror film franchise features a character named Pinhead, leader of the Cenobites?

Hellraiser's first film never calls him Pinhead: it credits him only as 'Lead Cenobite', and the nickname began as an on-set joke that stuck.

What is the traditional name for a witch's book of spells and rituals?

Grimoire is thought to be an altered form of the Old French for 'grammar', from the days when book learning was linked with magic; the English word 'glamour' grew from the same root.