130 Years Ago, 1895 transcribed as originally published in the Youngstown Vindicator:

“Lads and lassies will all join in celebrating All Hallowe’en this evening. A festival of merriment, unkissed maids will look for their prince in the mirror.”

“To-night is All Hallowe’en when goblins, fairies and ghosts have legendary privilege to dance and cut capers in Woodland dell and country graveyard, there being as yet no record of the well behaved ghosts of a city cemetery indulging in midnight revels in celebration of the ushering in of All Saints Day.

“The first record of the celebration of Hallowe’en comes from England and Scotland and is also mentioned in early history of Ireland. In England the celebration was largely given to feasting and merry making, but in Ireland and Scotland superstitions entered largely into the celebration of Hallowe’en. The same furies that stole the tail of Tom O’Shanter’s mare, crossing the bridge at Alloway Kirk, were supposed to dance on Hallowe’en on Scottish heather, and witches that rode on broom sticks were supposed to fly by night all over Ireland up to all kinds of deviltry.

“It remained for the American boy to adopt the deviltry of the witches, and learn the proficiency of throwing cabbage stalks, the operation of the nerve-destroying tick-tack, the mixing up of gates and signs, and the scaring of the timid out of a year’s growth by the apparition of the ghostly pumpkin head. The city policeman is the greatest preventative known to this sort of revelry. But the boy who can’t escape the vigilance of the police is hardly entitled to the joy of scaring people, which is the chief delight of a boy’s celebration of Hallowe’en.

“Old time customs of the celebration of Hallowe’en consisting of the ducking for apples, the roasting of chestnuts, and other such amusements, still find followers. There is much merriment in the sight of a crowd circled around a tub half filled with water on which floats several apples, each named after some favorite beau, and the efforts of the ‘bobbers,’ as they are called, trying to capture with their teeth the apple named after the person they have a tender regard for. It used to be that the boys alone ‘bobbed’ for apples, and that when one was captured the lucky fellow was entitled to kiss the maiden whose name the apple bore, but since the doctors have said that there is danger of the transfer of bacilli of disease through the medium of a kiss, this custom has gone largely out of vogue.

“Some superstitions still cling to the celebration of Hallowe’en, mostly confined to spinsters and maidens who would wed, and who cannot resist the temptation of trying to get a sight of their future lord… peering out from the ghostly realms….

“One superstition says that if the maiden will put her shoe under her bed and go to sleep early that at midnight she will dream that her prince like he in the story of Cinderella will come and fit the shoe to her Trilby, when she may get to see what he looks like. This test is said to be very severe, for the maiden seldom sleeps from the nervous dread that she may not dream and thus miss seeing the prince. A good thing in connection with this superstition is for the maiden to eat mince pie before going to bed.

“But whether the goblins, fairies and ghosts dance tonight, one thing is certain, the small boy will be abroad, and tomorrow morning many citizens will be seeking their front gates and any other loose property he might have had about his premises.”

• Compiled by Dante Bernard, museum educator at the Mahoning Valley Historical Society