Halloween Trivia

Pumpkin — In North America and much of the world, pumpkins are the standard choice for carving jack-o'-lanterns.

October 31 — Halloween falls on October 31, the evening before November 1.

All Hallows' Eve — "Halloween" comes from "All Hallows' Eve," the name for the evening of October 31.

Trick or treat — Saying "trick or treat" is the customary greeting of children collecting candy on Halloween.

Bat — Bats are the only mammals capable of true flight, and their nighttime habits made them a spooky symbol.

Fruit — A pumpkin develops from a flower and holds the plant's seeds, so botanists classify it as a fruit.

White — Classic candy corn has a yellow wide end, an orange middle and a white tip.

Vampire — Count Dracula is the vampire villain of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.

Mary Shelley — Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was first published in 1818.

Bram Stoker — Irish author Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897.

Werewolf — Werewolf legends describe people who transform into wolves, often on the night of a full moon.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow — Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820) features the ghostly Headless Horseman.

Broomstick — Folklore and storybooks commonly show witches flying on broomsticks.

Bad luck — Many Western superstitions say a black cat crossing your path brings bad luck, though some cultures see them as lucky.

Mummy — Mummies are preserved bodies wrapped in strips of linen cloth.

Ancient Egypt — The ancient Egyptians are famous for preserving their dead through mummification.

Cauldron — A cauldron is a big pot hung over a fire, and it is a classic symbol of storybook witches brewing potions.

Jack-o'-lantern — A hollowed, carved pumpkin lit from within is known as a jack-o'-lantern.

Apples — Bobbing for apples is a traditional autumn party game in which players catch floating apples without using their hands.

Autumn — Pumpkins are planted in late spring or early summer and ripen for harvest in autumn.

The scientist — Victor Frankenstein is the young scientist, while the creature he builds is never given a name.

Garlic — European folklore holds that vampires are repelled by garlic, an idea used in Stoker's Dracula.

Black — Orange and black are the classic Halloween colors, linked to autumn harvests and dark nights.

A bedsheet — Draping a white bedsheet with eyeholes over your head is the most traditional homemade ghost costume.

Eight — Spiders are arachnids, and all arachnids have eight legs.

Pointed cone — Witches are traditionally drawn wearing a tall, pointed, cone-shaped hat with a wide brim.

Turnips — People in Ireland and Scotland carved faces into turnips and other root vegetables before pumpkins became popular in America.

Stingy Jack — Irish folklore tells of Stingy Jack, a trickster doomed to roam the night carrying a coal inside a carved turnip.

The Celts — Samhain was a Celtic festival held around November 1 in Ireland, Scotland and other Gaelic lands.

The harvest season — Samhain marked the end of the harvest and the start of winter, the darker half of the Celtic year.

1818 — Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was first published in London in 1818.

1897 — Dracula was first published in 1897.

Transylvania — In Stoker's novel, Dracula lives in a castle in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania.

Washington Irving — Washington Irving published "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in 1820.

Ichabod Crane — Ichabod Crane is the lanky schoolmaster at the center of Irving's tale.

Robert Louis Stevenson — Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Gaston Leroux — Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera first appeared as a book in 1910.

Gourd family — Pumpkins are squashes in the gourd family, Cucurbitaceae, along with cucumbers and melons.

Pepitas — Pepitas are hulled pumpkin seeds, and the name comes from the Mexican Spanish word for small seeds.

Canopic jars — Egyptian embalmers stored the removed organs in canopic jars, often topped with lids shaped like protective figures.

Lycanthropy — Lycanthropy comes from the Greek words for wolf and human and describes werewolf transformation.

Silver — Later folklore and fiction popularized the idea that silver, such as a silver bullet, can stop a werewolf.

Abraham Van Helsing — Professor Abraham Van Helsing of Amsterdam is the expert who guides the hunt for Count Dracula.

A potion — Dr Jekyll creates a chemical potion that turns him into Edward Hyde.

Paris — The Phantom of the Opera is set in the Paris Opera house, the Palais Garnier.

New York — Sleepy Hollow is a valley near Tarrytown in the Hudson Valley of New York.

Guising — Scottish "guisers" went door to door in costume, often performing a song or joke in exchange for treats.

A familiar — Folklore describes a witch's familiar as an animal spirit companion, often a cat, toad or owl.

A pumpkin — The morning after the chase, townsfolk find Ichabod's hat beside a shattered pumpkin.

Evening — "E'en" is a contraction of "even," an old word for evening, so Hallowe'en means the evening of All Hallows.

Brom Bones — Brom Bones, the nickname of Abraham Van Brunt, competes with Ichabod for Katrina's hand.

Chicken Feed — Because many Americans then fed corn to chickens, early candy corn boxes were labeled "Chicken Feed."

1880s — Candy corn is credited to candymaker George Renninger of the Wunderle Candy Company in the 1880s.

Letters and diary entries — Dracula is assembled from characters' letters, journals, telegrams and newspaper clippings.

The Modern Prometheus — The novel's full title is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

1886 — Robert Louis Stevenson's novella was first published in 1886.

1931 — Universal released both Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931.

Ghostly lights over marshes — "Jack-o'-lantern" was an old name for will-o'-the-wisp, the flickering lights sometimes seen over bogs and marshes.

Female flowers — Only female flowers have an ovary at their base, which swells into a pumpkin after pollination.

Large melon — "Pumpkin" developed from the Greek "pepon," meaning a large melon, through French and English forms.

Whitby — Dracula's ship, the Demeter, runs aground at Whitby on the Yorkshire coast.

Henry — The doctor is Henry Jekyll, while his darker self is named Edward Hyde.

The Arctic — The story is framed by Robert Walton's letters from his voyage toward the North Pole.

Erik — Leroux names his Phantom Erik, while Raoul is the young vicomte who loves Christine.