All Hallows’ Eve

The tradition of All Hallows’ Eve is not a Christian date, but it is the day before All Saints’ Day. Prior to Pope Gregory III (731-741A.D.), All Saints’ Day was celebrated in May (and is still done so in the Eastern Orthodox Church), but was then moved to Nov 1. In Scots Gaelic, the word “eve” is e’en, a contraction for even (eve or evening), and the term Halloween comes from the contraction of All Hallows’ Eve. And thus All Hallows’ Eve becomes Halloween.

Coincidentally, the Gaelic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-win) was celebrated throughout the Celtic world from sunset on Oct 31 to sunset on Nov 1. As Christianity spread throughout the world, it often attempted to replace existing religious or pagan rituals with Christian celebrations. This may have been, at least in part, the reason for selecting Nov 1 as All Saints’ Day.

Samhain is one of the four major Gaelic seasonal festivals and marks the end of harvest and the beginning of Winter. It was believed that on this date, the spirits and folk of Faery could more easily cross into our world. In the 16th century, folk would dress as malevolent spirits and go from house to house expecting those within to donate food for the Samhain feast. Donating would result in good luck; not donating might result in mischief on the part of the “malevolent spirits”.

As with many of our most beloved holidays, it is from a combination of modern religious and ancient pagan rituals that our traditions are drawn. And over time, they evolve from serious rituals to children’s festivities.

Some Halloween Urban Legends

A Good Whiskey!

The Legend:
Odell had worked at The Distillery in Moore Co, Tenn, for most of his life. His Pa had worked there and his old GrandPa had worked for old man Lem himself. On Friday, which just happened to be Halloween, as he had done for the past 28 years he stood in line to get his check…and his bottle of whiskey. Odell worked his shift that day and, after everyone else had gone home, he found a favorite spot and sat down with his bottle to sample his handy work.

On Monday morning, Leroy, one of the early arrivers, found a near finished bottle beside Fermenter No. 13, an ominous location indeed. On further inspection, he found Odell floating in the fermenter, face to Heaven and a grin on his face to shame the Cheshire Cat.

Odell had no family but he had left word that he wished his remains to be cremated as he was intensely claustrophobic. So on All Saints Day, after a short service attended mostly by his fellow workers, Odell’s body was committed to the crematorium. It took them over three days to put out the blaze! To this day, if you open Fermenter No. 13 and look quickly, you might see two blazing eyes and one big smile fading into the mash.

The Truth:

No one has ever been known to fall into the vats of Moore Co. However, instances of spontaneous human combustion have been documented. In more than one case, it has been reported that nearby was found a square bottle with a black label…and the number 7. Some say it is a symbol of good luck; others an omen of bad luck. For Odell, perhaps it was both.

What’s that Funny Smell in Your Hotel Room?

The Legend:
A couple checks into a hotel and have to put up with a foul odor in their room all night. They call the staff to complain and somebody figures out the stench is coming from the bed.

Now, there's no way that scenario is going to have a good ending. You're almost hoping at that point that it'll turn out the last guest just got drunk and pooped behind the headboard. But, no, the staff take off the mattress and discover the couple has been sleeping over the rotting body of a dead girl who had been stuffed in the box spring.

The Truth:
This actually happened, in Las Vegas. Also, Kansas City, MO and Atlantic City, NJ and several times in Florida and California and, well, let's just say that in or under the bed in a hotel room seems to be a fairly popular destination for the recently deceased.

It makes sense if you think about it. The closet and under the bed are the two most popular places to hide just about anything, so it's not surprising a hell of a lot of corpses end up there as well. In fact, the odds are pretty good that at least once a guy has killed a prostitute, tried to stuff her under the bed, only to find there was already a body there.

The Charming Halloween Decoration

The Legend:
What was thought to be your typically charming Halloween decoration depicting a lynched woman hanging from a tree, turns out to be a genuine suicide.

The Truth:

In the town of Frederica, Delaware, a 42-year-old woman, perhaps distraught by the fact that she lived in Delaware, hung herself from a tree near a busy road on a Tuesday night. The body managed to hang there until the next day and was viewed by many unwitting spectators before somebody realized it wasn't a decoration and finally called the police.

The Funhouse Mummy

The Legend:

A prop at a carnival was discovered not to be made of the usual combination of papier mache and carni spit, but human skin and bone. All the little kiddies at the haunted house had been poking and giggling at a real, mummified dead body.

The Truth:

Apparently the smell wasn’t just coming from the convict manning the corndog stand. Back in 1976, a camera crew filming an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man began to set up in the haunted house at the Nu-Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, CA. As they were moving aside a "hanging man" prop, they accidentally knocked off its arm and discovered human bones inside. Bionic, this poor sap wasn’t.

The story gets stranger. The body was actually that of criminal mastermind Elmer McCurdy, who was killed in a shootout after robbing a train in 1911. The princely sum old Elmer got killed for? $46 (and two jugs of whiskey).

McCurdy was embalmed by the local undertaker, and apparently the guy was so darn pleased with his work that he propped up the corpse in the funeral home as evidence of his skills. People were charged 5 cents to see the corpse, which they paid by dropping a nickel in the cadaver’s mouth.

Buried Alive

The Legend:

Some poor schmuck is committed to his or her eternal resting place, even though they aren’t quite ready to take that final dirt nap. Scratch marks are later found on the coffin lid along with other desperate signs of escape.

The Truth:

This not only happened, but at one time it happened with alarming regularity. In the late 19th century, William Tebb tried to compile all the instances of premature burial from medical sources of the day. He managed to collect 219 cases of near-premature burial, 149 cases of actual premature burial and a dozen cases where dissection or embalming had begun on a not-yet-deceased body.

Now, this may seem ridiculous, but keep in mind this was an era before doctors such as the esteemed Dr. Gregory House gained the ability to solve any ailment within 42 minutes. If you went to the doctor with the flu in those days, he’d likely cover you in leeches and prescribe you heroin to suppress your cough. Their only method for determining if a person had died was to lean over their face and scream "WAKE UP" over and over again. If you didn't react, they buried you.

The concern over being buried alive back then was so real that the must-have hot-ticket item for the wealthy and paranoid were "safety coffins" that allowed those inside to signal to the outside world (usually by ringing a bell or raising some type of flag) should they awake 6-feet under.

Of course, there’s no way something like this could still happen today. Uh, well, except for this story about a Venezuelan man waking up during his autopsy.