Halloween

Stories tagged Halloween, drawn from every section.

Stories for the season of monsters and séances. Some are tied to the date itself: Harry Houdini died on Oct 31, 1926, and his widow Bess held Halloween séances for him until the last one in 1936.

The rest are the true histories behind the monsters people still dress up as: how Dracula got his name, what the 1931 Frankenstein lost to the censors, and whether Sweeney Todd was real. Each tile says why the story is here.

14 stories

Halloween: how Dracula got his name, Whitby 1890
Dracula Was Almost Called Count Wampyr
A seaside holiday gave Bram Stoker his villain’s name, and the shipwreck that became the Demeter.
Halloween: Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and its double role
One Actress Played Mary Shelley and the Bride
Elsa Lanchester got a credit for Mary. For the Bride, the credits printed a question mark.
Halloween: the demon barber's 1846 penny-dreadful debut
Was Sweeney Todd Real?
The demon barber of Fleet Street first appeared 180 years ago this November, in a penny weekly. Four years later his publisher printed a preface swearing "there certainly was such a man," and people have been looking for his trial ever since.
Halloween: Frankenstein (1931) and the scenes censors cut
Frankenstein’s Casting and Cuts
The 1931 Frankenstein almost had a different director and a different monster, and the version most people saw for 50 years was missing its most shocking minute.
Halloween: the Dracula shot at night on the same sets
The Night-Shift Drácula
While Bela Lugosi slept, a second Dracula moved into his castle. Universal shot a Spanish-language version on the same sets, at night, and for 60 years almost nobody in the US could see it.
Halloween: Poe's raven, first printed under a fake name
The Raven, by Quarles
America's most famous poem first appeared credited to "Quarles." A New York newspaper put Poe's real name on it a few days early, and the $9 he supposedly earned for it is only one of four different numbers.
Halloween: the grisliest tale the Grimms ever printed
The Grimm Tale They Cut
The first edition of Grimms' Fairy Tales (Dec 20, 1812) contained a two-part story about small children who play "butcher" and actually cut a boy's throat. It was gone by the second edition, and most readers have never heard of it.
Halloween: costumed kids begging door to door, before trick-or-treat
New York’s Thanksgiving Maskers
More than a century ago, New York children put on masks and their parents' old clothes and went door to door asking for pennies. They did it on Thanksgiving Day, and in the 1930s the city's schools chief and its charities worked to end the custom.
Halloween: Houdini died Oct 31, 1926
Houdini, 100 Years Gone
Harry Houdini died on Halloween 1926, and for a century people have blamed a student's punch to the stomach. The surgeons' story is less dramatic: a burst appendix, a sold-out show, and a man who refused to go to the hospital.
Halloween: the rooftop séance, Oct 31, 1936
Houdini’s Final Séance
On Halloween night in 1936, ten years after Houdini died, his widow Bess held a séance on the roof of a Hollywood hotel to see whether he would send a message from the dead. The Library of Congress holds the radio script for that night, and it shows the broadcast was planned line by line.
Halloween: Houdini died Oct 31, 1926
The Punch and the Medical Record
For a century people have blamed a student's punch to the stomach for killing Houdini. His surgeons, McGill's archive and the calendar tell a slower story about a burst appendix and a man who would not stop performing.
Halloween: the code meant to reach Houdini after death
The Code Called “Rosabelle, Believe”
Before he died, Houdini and his wife Bess agreed on a secret coded message, so that if he ever spoke from the dead she would know it was really him. In January 1929 a medium, Arthur Ford, gave her the message, and the next day a New York tabloid, the Graphic, called the séance a hoax.
Halloween: magicians hold a ceremony at Houdini's grave
The Bust That Keeps Escaping
The stone bust of Houdini on his grave in Queens was smashed or stolen four times between 1975 and 1993, according to The New York Times. The bust there now was installed in 2011 by a Pennsylvania magic museum that did not tell the cemetery first.
Halloween: the legend says he drowned in it on Oct 31, 1926
Houdini Didn’t Die in the Water Cell
Many people believe Houdini drowned in his Water Torture Cell, the tank he escaped from upside down. That ending comes from the 1953 Hollywood film Houdini. In real life the act did injure him in 1926, when, according to the Library of Congress, the stocks holding his feet broke and he fractured his ankle.

Commons Cut · free every week

Get stories like this in your inbox, free.

The strange stories behind familiar classics, in a free weekly newsletter, on the website, and in short videos. Free every Tuesday. Issue No. 2 is out now: Was trick-or-treating born on Thanksgiving?

Free when you subscribe: the Public Domain Day 2027 cheat sheet (PDF).

Want the full, true story behind each work? See The Director’s Cut, our paid edition.

from Half-In Productions