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Hey, everybody. For this week's Select, I've chosen our 2019 episode on trick-or-treating. It's a really in-depth look at trick-or-treating, and it's got a lot of surprising stuff inside. It turns out that if you don't set abandoned buildings on fire on Halloween, then you've been trick or treating all wrong all this time. But don't worry, we're releasing this just in time for you to learn the ropes this Halloween. Happy and extremely safe Halloween, everybody.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles Devy, Chuck Bryant over there. There's Jerry, and this is Stuff You Should Know, the right before Halloween edition about- I get trick-or-treating.

I feel like a little kid every Halloween.

I'm pretty excited about it.

Yeah. Do you get trick-or-treaters?

No, not really. No? Condo life.

Hashtag, etc. 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.

No.

You know the old dead oak tree with the big hole in it that boo Bradley hides figures in is off-putting as right on.

Your property. I think in my neighborhood, too, they literally close off, the cops close off two blocks. There's just this big square of streets, and that's the official sanctioned no stress area where the parents all just walk around and get drunk and all the kids just run around and don't have to worry about cars. Right. Everyone in my neighborhood is congregated there.

You're outside.

Of the.

Comfort zone?

Yeah, which I miss. I like trick-or-treaters coming to my house. I guess I could maybe try and... Well, I can move a few houses in, which I'm not going to do.

You could casually move the roadblocks a little further back to include.

Your house. Well, they're actual police cars with police officers. I can't move them.

Give.

Them some toys. But I could put signs like, This way for the best yet. And then you're like, Only two.

More houses. Right, or like, Leave a trail of candy.

Because I remember when I first moved to Atlanta, we rented a house that got a lot of trick-or-treaters, and I loved it, man. I scared the heck out of those kids.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. That was my first big adult giving out candy night, the first time I've ever been able to do that because we didn't have kids yet, so we weren't out trick or treating. I pumped music out, like the psycho theme and scary John Carpenter stuff. Sure.

I really enjoyed it. Did you do anything to overtly scare them?

Oh, yes. 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? Good for.

You, Chuck. Or I would stand and Emily would be giving out candy and I would just be in the darkened house eight feet behind her, just standing there motionless. That's always a.

Nice tack. Nice.

But the point is, I feel like we're missing out. We certainly enjoy taking our daughter out, but I really wish we had kids that came by.

Yeah, I wish you did, too. It's too bad. Yeah.

A stupid house right there near the main road.

It's so close. Yeah, so far away.

So far away.

Yeah. That's your forever house, too, huh? Yeah. No trigger treaters ever again.

For you. I'm walked in there. But what we could do is we could go to a friend's house.

And-that's-you.

Have to jump on their coatails.

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. Me and my friend, Eddie and Allison, you know them about they have a good backyard. It's about doing a haunted trail one year. That if you come trick or treating, you got to go through the trail first.

It sounds like a lot.

Of work. It is, and it would be fun.

No, I mean, for the kids who have to go through the trail.

You got to earn.

Right, you got to earn that free candy.

Earn that Risa's Pieces.

We just hit upon 15 different themes in this episode, if you'll agree. Agree. Do you agree? Yes. We're talking about trick or treating here. If you look at the thing on its face, just the words, trick or treat.

There.

Seems to be some option here. You can do one or the other. 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. We aren't 100 % sure on where trick or treating came from. But what we do know is that it was originated in America in the 20th century, and that there was this brief golden age where it lived up to its name, trick or treat. 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 them candy, you got pranked. That was the equation. It was in the name. Everybody knew the score. And then it slowly moved over to what we understand today where the police set up roadblocks and everything is safe.

These kids.

These days. And it's 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. Sure. Because it's just a fun thing for kids.

Yeah.

Or do you think they should be earning the stuff?

No, no, no. I don't feel that way. I do feel, well, I think it'll come through loud and clear as we do the episode. All right.

Well, we should jump back a little bit to the origins of Halloween. We've gone over this before and episodes past, but we all know it originally started as a Pagan Harvest or not just one, but Pagan Harvest festivals in general among the Kelts over in the UK.

Yes.

And that evolved into Halloween, but it had nothing to do with trick-or-treating at the time.

No, it wasn't around. Again, trick-or-treating is 100 % American invention. That's right. And so with Halloween in particular, you've got all these different components for the modern Halloween for trick-or-treating. You have going from house to house. You have getting to said house and asking for a treat, basically sanctioned begging. Got your costume. Costume, dressing up, being outside, parading around. All of these things find their origin in the Celtic, and I think specifically Gaelic harvest festivals that introduced the dark half of the year.

That's right.

And in particular, there was Sawin, which forever I've always said Sam Hane, because that's how it's spelled.

No, you said Sawin, right? When we did our Halloween episode, didn't you?

Probably. Yeah. By the way, speaking of Sawin or Sam Hane, you realized that I went to New York and saw The Misfits on Saturday.

Oh, yeah. How was that? I'm sure it was great.

It was colossally amazing.

This is the original Misfits, right?

The original Misfits, Glenn Danzig, Jerry Only, Doyle Wolf Gang, von Frankenstein, who actually specifically invited us.

To this-Yeah, stuff.

You should know, listener, right? Yes, to this show, and it was-That's amazing. And it was knock your socks off.

Didn't the.

Damned play as well? The Damned Open and then Ransid, and then the Misfits just tore the roof off the sucker.

When I saw you were going, I looked up some YouTube clips of this tour, and it looked pretty amazing.

It was amazing. I think Glenn Danzig said that was their last one ever. Oh, really? And so we got to see it. You and me and I had a great time. Amazing. So big thanks to Doyle, Wolfgang, von Frankenstein for the invite.

The stage set up looked great.

It was just a really cool show and they played almost everything. It was.

Just a really good. Yeah, it was. That's fantastic.

So anyway, back to Satwood.

Yeah, so I mean, that's a perfect time to mention that show, though. It all worked out.

It.

Did. Hallows' Eve was the night considered when the veil between the living and the dead was the shortest. And so that's when Halloween formed.

Right. Right. So people would dress up in modern day Ireland, Scotland, I believe, Wales. Yeah, Wales. Is a man. They would dress up like demons or fairies or supernatural characters who were, because this veil was so thin between the living and the dead or the supernatural, 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. Now we've got the costume thing going, right?

That's right. Part of that was the community getting together, getting drunk on probably high octane, mead, and stuff like that. They would parade through the town. They still have Halloween parades all over the place. Here in Atlanta, we have one of the best and little Five Points, the Halloween parade, fantastic.

When you think about Halloween parade at your town, that is centuries, millennia old. That tradition is.

Yeah. We have those two things going on. Then the one missing piece is knock, knock, hey, give me candy.

Right.

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' Eve would go from house to house and pray for the souls of the departed, and in exchange, you would get a soul cake.

Yeah, which I looked up. They look pretty good.

What is it? Just a little baked good?

It looks like a muffin top, like top of the muffin to you.

It.

Looks really good.

Soul cakes or mumbing, 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 performance to get a treat of some kind or maybe a little spare change. Right.

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. In fact, that was the origin or the biggest tradition of Halloween itself was pranking.

Yeah, and that came from Ireland, is that right?

Yeah, supposedly in the 1880s, they would prank, they would just run around doing prank, and then they would blame those fairies or demons on Sawa for the mischief. That it wasn't us, it was.

The fairies. On Samhain. Right.

I mean, that's how.

It's spelled. Yeah, that's a confounding pronunciation.

It is. But there you.

Have it. That's right. Then prank's back then. Of course, we're pretty low key, Ding-Dong-Ditch, stuff like that. Moving the neighbor's furniture to the roof.

I saw that. Yeah, not bad. I like flower pot on the chimney. Sure. But it would also get way worse than that.

Yeah, I looked up Mischief Night. We never did that in Georgia.

No. Or Devil's Night, it was also called.

Yeah, which is the night before Halloween when all these pranks would happen. Region to region is called different. Apparently in New Jersey, it's Mischief Night. Or Cabbage Night or something? Well, in Camden, New Jersey, it's Mischief Night. Other parts of New Jersey, they call it Cabbage Night. Cincinnati calls it Damage Night.

That's pretty overt. That's a punk band name right there.

Damage Night? Yeah. Totally. That's your insurance deductible night. I don't know why Ohio is so highly represented here. Beggars Night is something else they called it in Ohio.

Check because there's nothing else to do in Ohio, but sit around and wait for that night.

For Hallows' Eve. Other names, Doorbell Night, Trick Night, Corn Night, Tiktok Night, Goosey Night. Then in Canada, Gate Night or Mat Night, if you're in Quebec, M-A-T.

They would steal the gate off your fence or the mat from your doorstep and remove it. Oh, really? -remove it, yeah.

Oh, okay.

They were pretty on the nose, especially Damage Night.

But Devil's Night in Detroit, it became legendary over about a 20 year period in the 70s and through the mid 90s, I saw before they finally got a little bit of a... Could put a dent in it by forming Angels's Night.

Yeah, they rebranded it.

Well, 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 arson.

It was a 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 hundreds of kids, in 1994, I think there were 315 kids.

Arrested.

On Devil's Night. For setting fires? Fires and other stuff.

In 1984, the peak of Devil's Night in Detroit, there were 810 cases of arson in one night in Detroit. They would just set the city on fire.

I'm sure some of these were bags of poop on a doorstep. Right. Which I think we can all agree is harmless fun.

It is, unless you're the stepy.

I never did any of this stuff. I never rolled the house.

Oh.

You didn't? No. Oh, that's fun. I'm so mad. I was so busy being good.

It's never too late, buddy.

I know. I should roll a house or fork a yard.

I don't know what that is.

The plastic forks. Just basically get 2,000 plastic forks and stick them.

In the yard. Oh, really? Yeah. I've never heard of that one. You never did that? I've never really chew.

Up a lawnmower. I never egged a house because I always heard that that really damages paint.

But.

We did have the junior-senior egg fight every year. That was fun.

Well, there you go. You got something.

Going on. We'd get together in a field and throw eggs at each other.

Aside from wasting a-A lot of eggs. -precious resource-course. With, well, eggs, yes, but also toilet paper, you really should roll somebody's house at least once in your life. It's great. Is it? Yeah.

All right. I'm going to 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 early, so we were doing it basically in broad daylight. It was dust at best. And a cop drove by, which never happened in our neighborhood, ever, never. The cops just weren't needed. I think we talked about in the Free Range episode, the Free Range parents episode, you could just do whatever. And we had to knock out 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 fine. Don't worry about it. We rolled her house and had to get safe harbor from her.

Yeah, and you can't really clean up a rolled house, can you?

You.

Can, and.

I have if they come tell your parents what you did. How do you do that? The rain makes it way worse.

Yeah, but, I mean, you can't climb up there. You just have to wait for.

The rain. Right. Some of it's inevitably stuck up there, but you can pull it down as gingerly as you can to get as much as you can. But no, some is going to be left over.

All right, I'm going to roll a house.

Okay. Just know whose house you're rolling. You don't want to get shot at or.

Anything like that. I don't see that anymore either. 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.

I probably called it TPEing a house.

Yeah, that's Ohio. Yeah, TPEing.

All right, let's take a break.

We barely talked about this. I think we're one.

Page in. Good. That's great.

All right.

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Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know.

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All right, so to recap, Chuck, we have the costumes in play now. We have being out on Halloween nights, sometimes parading drunkenly. Community. We have going from house to house, and we have the prank factor. That's right. 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 20th century. At some point, some kids said, we think, hey, you know what? We could pull all this together and turn it into something really amazing and peculiar and unique called trick-or-treating.

That's right. You found a great piece from a sociologist named Samira Kawash. Great name. Called Gangsters, pranksters, and trick-or-treating 1930 to 1960.

Yeah.

And is this that pure period that you 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 Kawash believes, too, is that it was actually kids who figured this out.

Which is great.

Who said, We can extort adults to not prank them if they give us treats. Right. And that it was a genuinely an invention of kids. They made it up. Right. And there's some evidence for that thing. A lot of the early newspaper accounts of it call the kids gangsters and say they're extorting people. It's also possible that it was written super tongue in cheek and that it was dry and lost to the ages. Yeah. The other historical view is that the kids were out pranking and doing the prank, and it was the adults that introduced treats into the equation to buy.

Them off. Okay.

Yeah, to keep them from pranking.

Right. Los Angeles, possibly as the point of origin. And this one, wealthy kids, I guess that makes sense that this would be the idea of kids of privilege. Sure. 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... This is that pre-1930.

Period, though. Yeah, they think sometime in the 20s. And if you think about it, that really resembles what we do today.

Yeah.

But in between that origin and where we've arrived today, there was this pure period, 1930 to 1960. Some people might even take it a little further beyond that, where the kids seem to have run the show. And there really was both sides of the equation, a trick or a treat.

Right. But that term actually was in 1927 in an article, right? Is that the first time they found the two words in print together? Right. I guess three words. That was in an article about a town called Blackie in Alberta, Canada. Yeah. And it seems like all of it was 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 20s because in 1919, there was a book by Ruth Edna, called- Ruth Edna Kelly. Ruth Edna Kelly called The Book of Halloween. It didn't mention any trick or treating in there.

No. It's like an exhaustive, comprehensive, home-maker's overview.

It would have been in there.

For sure. You got to think, poor Ruth Edna Kelly is like, Gosh, if I just waited two years to put this book out, they're going to come up with something brand new with Halloween two years after I come up with this book.

I 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.

Yeah, and you can track its progress from the dates and the mentions in the newspaper articles. From west to east. Right, yeah. There's those two sides. One say that it was kids who came up with it on their own. 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 it was adults who said, Whoa, kids, we don't want you setting fires any longer, derailing street cars, because every once in a while, somebody would die. People would get shot at by angry neighbors. 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. For the most part, though, it was just tolerated as one night a year when the kids basically had power and were allowed to run the show. This idea, this other historical view that adults finally said, Hey, we're not going to just say you can't do pranking, that'd probably be a bad thing.

But why don't we just start having parties on Halloween night while we're out pranking? There'll be cider and donuts and you can come inside and bob for apples and maybe do that instead of running around pranking the neighborhood. Once you did do that, you went from, and this is Samira Kawash 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 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. In this sense, trick or treating was something the adults introduced to keep kids from carrying out these prank.

Yeah, and it was by the time World War II came around, it was a big thing in the 1940s. But of course, with the sugar rationing and just the fact that there was World War II going on, it put a dent in it for a little while, but it came back bigger than it ever had been after the war.

I mean, seriously, it came very close to dying out from World War II. It was pretty new. It hadn't gained that much traction. There were a lot of cranks and grumps who were not happy about this thing. I'm curious what.

Else had died in the war and never came back. There's got to be lots of little things.

That's a great question. We should look it up.

But there were a couple of big pop culture tent poles that helped Halloween along. Charles Schultz's Peanuts, of course. It wasn't the Great pumpkin Charlie Brown yet.

That was the 60s.

I think. Yeah, but in 1951, he had a four-day comic strip run around Halloween where the Peanuts Gang got already and got their costumes going. And that really brought it to the forefront. And then Donald Duck, it was a cartoon, Donald Duck, trick or 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 working with the witch. Then the candy companies get involved.

There was also a very famous costume company called Ben Cooper Costumes.

There's just no way- Yeah, they're the ones who did the.

Cheap- Yes, plastic mask and a vinyl smock. That's right. But they had this really great talent of identifying what was going to be a pop culture phenomenon before it ever blew up. They get the.

Rights for cheap.

But they were also making these things 10 months before. 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's hard to overstate how big of a deal it was to a kid to be 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. Right. I think when you and I were kids, there's a lot of fashioning costumes. When you didn't have the ability to be the alien from Alien, or it was a lot harder to put together these elaborate costumes. But once you get your heart set on it, you had to. Sure.

I'm going to tell you my best costume and you tell me yours, okay?

Okay.

My mom made one from scratch.

Clown, this 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 dangling between my legs. 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 that. But I was an upside down walking clown. The greatest costume ever. Really? Yeah.

You've got any pictures?

Somewhere, yeah. Okay.

I did a lot of funny ones. My brother and I were Hans, Solo and Luke, Skywalker when I was really little. Nice. But then I got into like, I was always wanting to do funny characters I like. I did Ed Grimley one year, the Saturday Night, Live character. I did Ed Grimley one year. It's a good one. I don't know, I felt like I was always trying to make people laugh. I never did.

Scary stuff. Right, until little kids started coming around and trick or treating at your house?

Yes. Then you started to scare them. Or like movie characters. Even into my adult years, I would try and find some cool movie character like H. I. From Raising Arizona. I did one year.

It's almost like grim, same hair.

No, not the same at all, actually. And then one year I did a great... I actually won a contest in New Jersey one year when I was a Hardikushna, and I shaved my head and did the whole thing. Wow. I had literature I passed out. Wow. I made the whole deal.

You just ended up joining a local chapter?

For a little while.

It was fine. Really got into the role.

But it's been a few years since I've dressed up.

Yeah, same here.

Because I just-.

Oh, that's not true.

I think last year. I haven't been to a Halloween party in probably five years. Right. What were you last year?

I was Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.

So you were you, but with.

A tie. Right, exactly. And like a giant inflatable brick cell phone.

And.

Yume was a specific Michael Jackson, a moment of Michael Jackson's history where he's holding blanket over the balcony. Oh, sure. And Mo Mo's blanket. You can see it on Instagram.

That's great. I have to check that out. All right, so the candy company started getting involved. That's where I left off.

Yeah, and the costume company.

Because they knew it was gold for them. Mars, incorporated in the early 1950s, were doing ad campaigns on TV and in newspapers and on the radio and stuff about tick or treat. It became a thing with Unicef. They had a trick or treat for Unicef campaign back then?

I think they still might. You know what I'm talking about? The little boxes that holds change? Yeah. And they would just give them to little kids. And while they were out trick or treating, they'd also ask for change for Unicef to help needy kids overseas. And that actually went a really long way to legitimizing trick or treating.

Yeah, they're doing a lot these days, too, for kids, special needs kids. It's taken this long to finally get the word out. The Blue Punchions, have you heard of those? No. If you trick or treat with a Blue pumpkin, and that means that you have some special need where you may not be able to walk to a front door and say, tick or treat, I'm dressed as Michigan J. Bullfrog. What? It'd be a.

Great costume. It would be, but did you pull that off of...

Yeah. Wow. Nice. He's been on my mind lately. I guess so. People know like, Oh, you've got a blue pumpkin, so I shouldn't say, 'Come on, kid, why don't you tell me what your costume is? I can shake them. It's good, though. It's ironic that it's taken this long to get parents on board to the fact that some kids need different kinds of treatment.

I don't know if ironic is the best word as much as disappointing as-Yeah. -you know?

You're probably right. Should we take another break?

Oh, my God. We're going to have to take three more. No, we're not. Okay, yes, we will then.

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Stuff you should know.

All.

Right, 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 around Halloween, it's going to happen.

So by the early 50s, trick-or-treating was huge and established. If the 1930 and the 1960 was the heyday, the golden age of trick-or-treating, 1950 to 1959 was the salad days of the heyday.

Right. When did people start complaining about it? The '70s and '80s? No.

'90s? As far back as the 20s. Oh, really? Yeah, because those newspaper articles that you can track the progress of Halloween, more often than not, they were like old cranks complaining about how they didn't want to have to give tricks or treats or whatever to little kids.

Right. Don't you blackmail me.

Yeah, exactly. What are we teaching our kids? And there's actually, if you scratch beneath the surface of trick or treating, at first it appears to be a weird power struggle 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 over-parenting by being upset about this. This is just one night a year. It's good for kids. And other people are saying, This is terrible for kids. Allowing them to go from house to house to beg is just a bad idea. It's unsafe is another way to put it to. There's 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 ruin kids' experiences, whether it's like a Easter egg hunt or trick or treating. I've seen this in action.

Because they're too involved? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what it comes down to, is just how involved are you in your kid's trick or treating. For a very brief period, there was very little involvement in kids trick or treating. And a lot of people say that's actually really good for kids in this other way that we've 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 I've lived on.

The.

Dirt road with no neighbors or very few of them. But all my memories stem from being probably 10 to 15 and being completely on my own with my friends.

10 to 15?

10 years old.

But 10 to 15? That's pretty late.

What? To trick or treat?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, no, we trick or treated up until probably the ninth or 10th grade.

Well, we'll get to it. But in some places, you get arrested for that.

When did you stop? You'd still trick or treat if they would let you.

I think I stopped around 13.

No, maybe 15 was too late. Maybe 13 or 14.

You're fine. No, 15 is great. Go with God.

No, but you're probably right now that I look back. Maybe I went to Halloween parties, but maybe.

Not trick or treating. There's an unofficial slash official, again, in some places, cutoff after 12. Really? Yeah, because 13, you're a teenager now, and that's not kid stuff. As we'll see, allegedly, trick or treating is a transition from kidhood to adulthood. By the time you're 13, you've made that transition that's in your past. It's sad, but I don't know why I'm talking like Christopher Walkin 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, I see mostly parents not involved at all. They're there if your child is two or three, helping them walk to the door and stuff. But otherwise, we're just drinking and the kids are doing their thing.

Let's talk about this then. Let's skip toward the end and we'll jump back, okay? There is this debate over whether it's better to just cross your fingers and hope for the best and let your kids go out and trick or treat on their own, whether that's good or whether we need to... The world is just too unsafe for that. We need to much more manage kids trick or treating than just letting them go out on their own.

It depends.

On where you are. That's the big divide. Yeah. One of my personal heroes, the world's worst mom, Lenore Skanezi, who came up with the Free Range Kids blog and the whole movement, frankly, she makes this really great point that when we let kids tick or treat, we let them confront danger on their own. It's real. It's just a thin, the narrowest margin of danger. I mean, people always talk about the the worst things that could happen on Halloween when a kid's out trick or treating, getting hit by a car, getting kidnapped by a stranger, getting.

Like- An apple with a razor blade in it.

Yes, just stuff that happens. It can happen, it's true. But it happens so infrequently that the chances are it's not going to happen and you're actually better off just letting the kid roll the dice. Because as Lenore Skanezi puts it, when you go trick or treating, you're transitioning from being a kid to a grown up. You're doing this quite literally. You go with your parents first, and they teach you the rules of the road, like just take one piece of candy, or that house over there has their lights off, so leave them alone. They don't want to have anything to do with this. Then after that, you let them go on their own, right? They take the ball and roll with it. She says that when they're out trick or treating kids dressed like grownups, they take to the streets. At night. They encounter the scariest possible locals, witches, and goblins. Then, yes, they're doing at the scariest possible time night. The whole thing is dress rehearsal for adulthood. 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 and witches.

Sure. Right. Exactly. Where would we have been without trick or treating to prepare us for fighting goblins? But just confronting fears 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 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 take the candy. It's fine. 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.

I tend to fall on Lenore's Kanezi side on that.

Well, should we talk a little bit about whether or not there have been all these real horror stories over the years and whether or not any of those are true as far as the razor blade and the apple and stuff like that. Hypodermic needles and candy, this stuff doesn't happen.

No. The thing to point out, and I know we've talked about it before, is that it was an urban legend that came true.

Right. There was one case, and this is actually funny, if you ask me, in 1959, there was a dentist in California named William Schyne who took allo laxative pills and disguised them as candy and gave out 450 of them. What a jerk to kids. They were all pooping, I guess.

I think a few of them did poop. Nobody got injured, though. Right.

No, you're not going to get injured from a laxative. You could poop.

Over poop.

Over poop?

Yeah.

But this is when I think this real story got out and then all of a sudden it 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. The examples that are listed are reverse engineered almost.

Right. There was a little boy in Texas who died from eating a cyanide laced pixel stick in Texas in I can't remember what.

Year it was. '74.

It turned out that it was his dad that his dad was the scum of the earth who had taken out insurance policies on his own children. Good Lord. Then gave them spiked Halloween candy to make it look like some mad poisoner had killed his kid so he could collect insurance. One of his kids did die, but it wasn't just some random Halloween poisoner. That guy didn't really exist at the time.

Yeah, 1970 in Detroit was the heroin incident. This kid overdose. These kids ate their uncle's stash is what really happened. Then the uncle was like, Oh, crap. Let me sprinkle the heroin on the candy and cook up the story and maybe cook up some heroin since I'm cooking, and to try and get out of this. Again, it really happened, but not in the way that you think. No.

The thing that got everybody, so that William Shine guy, who I just think is a skill for that because he scared the pants off of America's parents.

He.

Basically said, Hey, you know how you're letting your kids run free? Something really bad could happen to him, and I just showed you how. From that next year on, the parents were anxiously involved in Halloween like they never have been before because of William Shine. But the thing that really killed Halloween, or at least cemented, I think, the anxieties in the heads of parents in America is that Tylenol poisoner. Oh, sure. Cancelled Halloween 1982. Did it, really? Almost drove Ben Cooper costumes out of business. Candy sales went down 50 %.

I had trick-or-treated in 1982.

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. Yeah, because I would have been 11. 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, 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. Now you have to this day, the FDA sending out guidelines around Halloween saying, don't let your kids eat any candy until they bring it home, which is just torture. You have to inspect it. If you see any pinholes or tears or anything that looks weird, just throw it away. Some hospitals say, Bring your kid's candy and we'll.

X-ray it to.

See if there's any razor blades or needles in it or something like that. This is the terror that ironically is overlaid on Halloween. It's like fun terror has actual real terror on top of it, 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, I was raised like that.

You.

Inspected candy. Oh, yeah, my parents were serious about it.

We never did. I don't know. I just, I don't know. That's great, man. Maybe it's that thing of like, if you're the... Because it doesn't happen.

Right. No, I'm heartened to hear that. Yeah. Because when we did our Free Range Kids episode, I remember thinking like, What? What's going on now? Kids are treated like this? They're not.

Allowed to run free? Kids are being poisoned by Halloween candy. It's just not happening. Right. Plus, in our neighborhood with the sanctioned closure, all the candy is people aren't buying their own candy. It's like the neighborhood buys all the candy and they congregate it in these couple of blocks. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Okay. I mean, there could be a mad man 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 just can't live that way. You can't live that way. You know, Yomi told me a story about... Like, villages in Japan have a festival or two every year. The whole community comes out. It's like a big deal. There was one village, little tiny town where this one woman just, I guess, went mad and poisoned the curry that she brought to the village thing and killed a bunch of town's people.

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 is what happens, then that's, you know...

Your.

Numbers up. Your numbers up and you're a story in the newspaper to scare other people.

You get to be immortalized on stuff you should know.

Is trick or 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 #condolife. I'm out of.

The action. Yeah, there's the last bit of this article you sent talked about it going away potentially, but I don't think that's ever going to happen. What are your arguments for it going away that it might?

My arguments? Or your-These.

Are my observations. Your observations.

One of the big ones is that fear among parents. That helicopter parenting has not been good for trick or treating. Okay? Okay. But think about it. That's a real struggle going on right now. Over parenting versus underparenting. Which one is going to win out? Right. Okay. Another one is there's a perception that that trick or treating is dying out, which is funny. Is there? Yes, because people are moving back into towns and gentrifying those towns, like we talked about in the historic district episode. As they're doing that, trick or treating was never huge in the city. People who were raised in the suburbs or were used to it are moving into the city and there's no trick or treating going on anymore. I guess trick or treating is dying because that's what I'm seeing.

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 that's all Atlanta is. It's a bunch of neighborhoods. 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 a decade ago. Sure.

But I beg to differ that trick-or-treating doesn't go on in the cities. I think there are apartment buildings in New York where people trick-to-treat. Just because it's not the Picket fence suburban neighborhood. Sure. I think trick or treating goes on everywhere. But this.

Author- Except my house. -judy Beck, who wrote in The Atlantic, she put it really well that basically the suburbs and trick or treating just go hand in hand. The suburbs are set up for trick or treat. Oh, yeah. You got houses that are close together. Super safe. Yep, where people who live there are just well enough off to buy enough candy for the whole neighborhood. They all have kids. They know each other enough that you're not embarrassed for your kid to go up and trick or treat there, and you know that this candy is not going to be poison. In the city, you're much more isolated from one another, even though you're living on top of one another.

Yeah, and I think maybe if we're talking about areas where there are poor 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. I 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, trunker treating.

Trunker treating in particular. Or... What was it called? Halloween... Tailgating?

Halloween tailgating. Trunker treating.

This is the idea that you... And we had this at 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. You go out and you get in a big church parking lot, essentially. You have Bobin' for Apples and the dunk tank.

No, this.

Is different. Huh?

This is a little different than that.

Well, I've seen these in person.

Okay, but that's a Halloween festival you're talking about.

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.

Are you going from car to car getting candy, like the cars or houses?

No, not necessarily, but they're giving out candy.

I mean, again- My friend, you're not talking about trunk or treating.

It feels very nit-picky to me.

No, but it's not.

And here's why. I'm not talking about a Halloween festival, though.

Okay, that's fine. But you're not talking about trunk or treating either.

You mean you walk five feet to a car and they give you candy then five feet to another car. Maybe even less than five. They say, don't play any games. Don't bob for apples or don't do anything else. All you're doing is.

Walking the cars. I'm not saying that they don't have bob for apples, but the purpose of trunker 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 were running the show are now penned in by the anxious adults cars, handing out candy rather than going to houses, walking around a church parking lot for trunker treating instead of trunker treating. Yes, I get that. These are not the.

Kids who could pull off- But that is not going to replace trunker treating.

-what the kids and the goonies were able to pull off because they had freedom and spark that kids who are trunk or treat are being denied. Let me go back to my friend Lenore, she says that trunk or treating is just another adult-led activity, one that reinforces the community killing idea that kids aren't ever safe outside the home, or school, or supervised program. 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 I have not seen since I've lived in Atlanta is any big trunk or treating activities.

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 got to end on a quote. I ran across a website, I guess, a church website that's talking about 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 is the opposite of what Halloween is all about.

That's.

Right. You got anything else?

It's about arson.

Right, 810 cases of it. Sorry, I'm one of those curmudgeons that turns out. One more thing? Yes. If you like Halloween, go on to our old stuffy chanel website and search Halloween and creepy, and you're going to find some amazing Slideshows we put together over the years. Oh, that's right. I remember those. One of my favorite is cute and cruddy Halloween costumes, vintage Halloween costumes that were really creepy. The best Jack-O'-Lanners, all sorts of.

Great stuff. Remember those days where we would count page views and get excited about that? Yeah.

This one felt like a bit of a titrate.

Yeah?

Was it? I don't think so. Okay, good. Well, if you want to know more about Halloween, get out there and tick or treat. Since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.

This is follow-up on Perifelias that we wanted to read for the last few weeks. Just now getting to it. Hey, guys. 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 in RN with MSN and have background in neurophysiology who enjoys studying abnormal psych. I understand you were doing a show on a psychological term, but you may have ended up painting wrong ideas onto certain practices, specifically, S&M and cross dressing. From what I've come to know, it's extremely rare that people practice these primarily for sexual gratification. Course, these practices are adult in nature, but most regard it as an emotional practice or exploration of self. For example, shibari or rope bondage takes hundreds of hours of practice to perform, and those that partake describe a meditation-like state as a result. Though most would say it's SNM. Most cross dressers describe the long process of becoming female as cathartic and self affirming, although be it 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 you were doing these practices for sexual gratification, all the power to you.

I suggest you look into kink culture as an episode. It's where a wide range of people congregate and share their interest in a community that is founded off respect and consent. There are meetups and presentations on practices so that others can learn proper technique. The most at practice would like to keep their privacy. And that is from Anonymous.

Thanks a lot Anonymous. That was a good correction email. That's right. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us like Anonymous did to set us straight, we love that thing, you can join us at stuffyoushouldknow. Com and check out our social links there. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio. Com.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart.

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