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Home >> Lifestyle: Home
Brews:
Uncanny Halloween Trivia
Think you know everything about
Halloween? Here is some
chilling trivia you may not have known:
- Halloween comes from the pagan
festival of Samhain. It was believed that on this night the spirits
of all those who had died the preceding year would come back
to haunt the living. To scare away or appease these spirits,
the people began dressing up in fiendish costumes and leaving
offerings of food at their door. During the 8th century, the
Christian church replaced the pagan holiday by naming Nov. 1
"All Saints' Day" and the night before as "All
Hallows Eve". Eventually, this name became Halloween.
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- The carving of Jack-O-Lanterns
comes from an 18th century Irish folk tale about a miserly drunkard
named Jack who is said to have trapped the Devil in the branches
of an apple tree. After Jack's death, he was not allowed into
Heaven, but the Devil wouldn't accept him either. So Jack was
left to wander the night endlessly, lighting his path with a
lit piece of coal inside a hollowed out turnip (later turned
into a pumpkin).
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- Superstitions about vampires
have existed from the earliest times and appeared in all cultures.
The "Vampir" (vampire) comes from Romanian legends
about spirits or demons that left their graves at night to seek
and enslave human victims. The vampire could be warded off with
a variety of charms, amulets, and herbs and could only be killed
by driving a stake through its heart or by cremation. It is from
this legend that Bram Stoker wrote his classic "Dracula."
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- In 16th Century France it
was believed that several noble families had become Lycanthropes,
or Werewolves. After several wolf attacks had occurred on their
land, a servant went to the local Bishop and confessed that he'd
seen his employers turn into wild dogs. After being captured
and tried, the accused "werewolves" were executed with
silver rosary beads fired from a musket. This is where the modern
myth of the werewolf comes from.
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- Unlike other monsters, Frankenstein
was not based on any actual person or event. In 1814 Mary Shelley,
the author of "Frankenstein," was traveling through
Darmstadt, Germany. While there, she noticed the ruins of an
ancient castle owned by a knight named Arbogast Von Frankenstein.
She was apparently so taken with the castle that she used its
name for the title of her novel about a student who creates an
artificial man while exploring the secrets of life in his laboratory.
Courtesy of ARA Content
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