100 HALLOWEEN FACTS, FACT-CHECKED

Most Halloween fact lists repeat the same claims, and many of them have no source anyone can point to. We checked 100 of them. Myths and folklore are labeled as such, every fact links to its source, and there is a companion video on our YouTube channel that walks through the same list.

1. Halloween is short for All Hallows' Even, the night before All Saints' Day (Catholic Encyclopedia).
2. Many lists say the word first appeared in 1745. Its first known use goes back to around 1700, in Scotland (Merriam-Webster).
3. All Saints' Day did not start on November 1. It was first held on May 13 (Catholic Encyclopedia).
4. Two popes, in the 700s and 800s, moved it to November 1 (Catholic Encyclopedia).
5. Myth. The Church is often said to have picked that date to stamp out a pagan festival. Historians say there is no evidence for that (UC Press).
6. All Souls' Day, on November 2, caught on in the early 1000s, starting at the French abbey of Cluny (UC Press).
7. In medieval England, church bells rang that night to comfort the souls in purgatory (The Tudor Society).
8. Poor people went door to door trading prayers for small pastries called soul cakes (History.com).
9. The Church encouraged soul cakes on purpose, as a replacement for the old habit of leaving food out for spirits (History.com).
10. In Victorian times, Halloween was mostly about romance and finding out who you would marry (History.com).

11. Halloween grew out of a Gaelic festival called Samhain, pronounced SOW-in, not Sam-hane (Aberystwyth University).
12. Samhain is often called the Celtic New Year. That is a modern guess, and the old sources never say it (Aberystwyth University).
13. Archaeologists digging at Tlachtga, a hill in Ireland, found signs of large feasts going back to around 1200 BC (Archaeology).
14. Folklore. On Samhain eve, every fire in Ireland was said to be put out, then relit from the druids' fire on that same hill (Archaeology).
15. Folklore. Tara was the seat of Ireland's high kings. The old histories say the great gathering there feasted for three days before Samhain and three days after (CELT, University College Cork).
16. In 2019, Ireland launched a festival called Púca that brings the Samhain fires back (Hot Press).

17. Folklore. In Irish myth, the Dagda, father of the gods, meets the war goddess the Morrígan on Samhain, and she promises to help him win his next battle (CELT, University College Cork).
18. Folklore. A fire-breathing creature was said to burn down the king's hall at Tara every Samhain, until the hero Finn McCool stopped it (History.com).
19. Folklore. In the Scottish Highlands, fairies were said to hold their revels that night and carry off anyone who was not careful (Project Gutenberg).
20. Folklore. To keep witches out, Scots hung rowan branches over the door and put salt on the step, and sometimes urine (National Records of Scotland).
21. Folklore. In Wales, children raced home from the Halloween bonfire, because the last one home was said to be caught by a ghost pig or a headless ghost woman (Aberystwyth University).

22. The first jack-o'-lanterns were carved from turnips, in Ireland and Scotland (Atlas Obscura).
23. Ireland's National Museum keeps a plaster cast of one from around 1900, made because the real turnip was rotting away (National Museum of Ireland).
24. On the Isle of Man, Halloween is called Hop-tu-Naa, and children there still carve turnips (Culture Vannin).
25. Folklore. Stingy Jack tricked the Devil, was shut out of both heaven and hell, and wandered forever with a coal in a turnip (History.com).
26. In the 1600s, jack-o'-lantern was slang for a night watchman, or any man carrying a lantern (Merriam-Webster).
27. That makes the Stingy Jack origin of the name shaky. The word is much older than the pumpkin lantern (Merriam-Webster).
28. Irish families who came to America switched from turnips to pumpkins, which grew there (History.com).
29. The record for the most lit jack-o'-lanterns in one place is 30,581, set in Keene, New Hampshire, in 2013 (Guinness World Records).

30. In 1785, Robert Burns wrote a poem called Halloween and footnoted every charm in it, so readers outside his part of Scotland would understand them (Project Gutenberg).
31. Folklore. You pulled up a kale stalk with your eyes shut, and its shape showed what your future spouse would look like (Smithsonian Magazine).
32. Folklore. Couples put two nuts in the fire. If one jumped away, the romance was over (Project Gutenberg).
33. Folklore. If you ate an apple alone at a mirror by candlelight, your future spouse would appear over your shoulder (Project Gutenberg).
34. Folklore. You threw a ball of yarn into a kiln, a farm oven for drying grain, in the dark. When the yarn caught, you asked who was holding it, and a voice answered with your future spouse's name (Project Gutenberg).
35. Folklore. In Wales, you peeled an apple in one long strip and tossed it over your shoulder. The letter it formed was your future spouse's initial (Museum Wales).
36. Folklore. At Welsh Halloween suppers, a ring was hidden in the mashed vegetables, and whoever found it would marry next (Museum Wales).
37. In Ireland, Halloween was also called Snap Apple Night. A painting of one from 1832 is on the Met's website (The Met).
38. Folklore. In North Wales, everyone threw a marked stone into the bonfire. If yours was gone by morning, you would die that year (People's Collection Wales).
39. Folklore. Also in Wales, if you waited in the church porch until midnight, a spirit would read out the names of everyone in the parish who would die that year (Project Gutenberg).

40. England's first major witch trial was in 1566, and the accused woman kept a white-spotted cat named Satan (Hanover College).
41. Folklore. In England, you stop picking blackberries after September 29, because after that the Devil spits on them (Plant-Lore).
42. Folklore. In Ireland, the cutoff is Halloween, when a shape-shifting spirit called the púca was said to spoil the berries (Fingal County Council).
43. Folklore. In Scotland, people born on Halloween were said to see spirits and even control them (Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable).
44. Folklore. On the Isle of Man, everyone made a small pile of salt on a plate. If yours had fallen over by morning, you would die that year (Project Gutenberg).
45. Myth. Bats are said to have joined Halloween because bonfires drew insects and insects drew bats. That is an unproven theory with no historical record behind it (Popular Science).
46. Myth. Bats circling a house three times, spiders being dead relatives, never turning around when you hear footsteps: we could not find a real source for any of these. They appear only on modern lists.
47. Myth. You do not swallow spiders in your sleep. There is no recorded case in the scientific literature (Burke Museum).

48. Black cats got their reputation from England's witch trials, where a pet could be called a witch's familiar, a demon helper in animal form. Owning a cat could be used against you (University of Victoria).
49. Myth. A pope is often said to have ordered Europe's cats killed, letting rats spread the Black Death. The 1233 letter people cite never orders a single cat killed (Snopes).
50. Myth. The ancient Celts are often said to have worn costumes on Samhain to hide from spirits. There is no real evidence for that. The costumes we can trace come from later customs like guising (Snopes).
51. Orange and black were not always the Halloween colors. Early 1900s party guides pushed yellow and brown, and orange took over once jack-o'-lanterns spread on postcards and in ads (NBC4 Washington).
52. Myth. Bobbing for apples is often traced to the Roman goddess Pomona. Halloween historian Lisa Morton gives a simpler reason: apples were ripe at the end of October (History.com).
53. The first person on record to confess to flying on a broom was a man, the French scholar Guillaume Edelin, in 1453 (History.com).
54. The pointed witch hat probably started as ordinary fashion. In the 1600s, many women wore tall, cone-shaped black hats (History.com).
55. Ghosts wear white sheets because for centuries poor families buried their dead wrapped in cloth, often the sheet off the bed (History.com).
56. Folklore. This one is not a Halloween custom. When you spill salt, you throw some over your left shoulder, because the Devil is said to stand there and the salt blinds him (USC Digital Folklore Archives).
57. Spilled salt already meant bad luck by the 1500s. In Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, a tipped-over salt dish sits by Judas's arm (Google Arts & Culture).
58. Folklore. In the Scottish Highlands, people told of the cat-sìth, a black fairy cat as big as a dog. Families watched over a body until burial so the cat could not steal the soul (Wikipedia).
59. Folklore. In Devon, England, if pixies led you in circles at night, the fix was to turn your coat inside out (Project Gutenberg).
60. Haunted houses go back to the 1930s, when parents threw spooky parties at home to keep teenagers from vandalizing the town (History.com).
61. The word bonfire comes from bone fire, which is what it was: a fire of bones (Merriam-Webster).
62. Skeletons became the face of death after the Black Death, when artists painted the Dance of Death, skeletons leading kings and peasants to the grave together (History.com).

63. Irish families who arrived during the famine of the 1840s helped spread Halloween across America (History.com).
64. In Scotland, children go guising instead of trick-or-treating, and they earn their candy with a joke, a song or a poem (Atlas Obscura).
65. The first printed "trick or treat" is usually traced to a 1927 newspaper in Alberta, Canada (City of Edmonton Archives).
66. The first American use came in 1928, when a Michigan paper described a child at the door delivering "the fatal ultimatum: tricks or treats" (Smithsonian Magazine).
67. During the Depression, Halloween pranks got destructive enough that towns started holding parties and parades to keep children busy (History.com).
68. World War II nearly ended trick-or-treating. Sugar was the first consumer product America rationed, in 1942 (History.com).
69. After rationing ended, children's magazines, Peanuts and a Donald Duck cartoon taught a new generation how to trick-or-treat (History.com).
70. Between about 1905 and 1915, people mailed so many Halloween postcards that around 3,000 designs were made (The Public Domain Review).
71. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown first aired on October 27, 1966 (TV Insider).

72. Candy corn dates to the 1880s, and one early maker sold it as Chicken Feed, in a box with a rooster on it (Museum of the Grand Prairie).
73. It was not a Halloween candy at first. It was a farm-themed treat sold all year (National Geographic).
74. Most people eat candy corn in one bite. In 2026, 60 percent said so (National Confectioners Association).
75. Chocolate is America's favorite Halloween candy, followed by gummies, hard candy, then candy corn (National Confectioners Association).
76. 83 percent of parents admit to sneaking candy from their children's bags (National Confectioners Association).
77. Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF began in 1950 and has raised more than 170 million dollars (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)).
78. Myth. Strangers poisoning Halloween candy is a myth. Sociologist Joel Best went through decades of reports and found no child killed that way (Newswise).
79. The one real Halloween candy poisoning was in 1974, when a father poisoned his own son for the insurance money (Snopes).
80. Myth. He is often said to have been executed on Halloween. He was executed on March 31, 1984 (Snopes).

81. Americans are expected to spend 13.5 billion dollars on Halloween in 2026 (National Retail Federation).
82. That works out to about 115 dollars per person (National Retail Federation).
83. The spending splits fairly evenly, about 4 billion dollars each on costumes, decorations and candy (National Retail Federation).
84. Myth. Halloween is often called America's second-biggest spending holiday. Valentine's Day and Mother's Day both draw more (National Retail Federation).
85. The top children's costume in 2026 is Spider-Man, and the top adult costume is a witch (National Retail Federation).
86. Americans will spend about 920 million dollars on pet costumes, and the most popular one is a pumpkin (National Retail Federation).
87. In 2025, Illinois grew more pumpkins than California, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania combined (USDA Economic Research Service).
88. Most of those are not for carving. They go into pie filling and canned pumpkin (USDA Economic Research Service).
89. The heaviest pumpkin ever weighed 3,156 pounds, weighed in Rhode Island in October 2026 (Guinness World Records).
90. It broke a record that had stood for only one week (Guinness World Records).

91. Day of the Dead is a separate holiday from Halloween: two days for remembering family members who have died (UW-Madison Community Altar).
92. Mexico City's big Day of the Dead parade only started in 2016, after a James Bond film showed a parade there that did not yet exist (Al Jazeera).
93. In the Philippines, the All Saints' holiday is called Undas. In 2025, about 3.8 million people visited cemeteries for it (The Philippine Star).
94. In Lithuania, cemeteries fill with candles on November 1 to light the way for wandering souls (Vilnius In Your Pocket).
95. There are more than 1,300 kinds of bats, and only three are vampire bats. All three live in the Americas (National Park Service).
96. Vampire bats do not suck blood. They make a tiny cut and lap it up (U.S. Geological Survey).
97. Myth. Blind as a bat is a myth. Bats can see, and some fruit bats see about three times better than people do (National Park Service).
98. Myth. Black cats are often said to rarely get adopted. In shelter data, they are adopted about as often as other cats (HumanePro).
99. A study at a haunted house in Pittsburgh found that people left in a better mood, especially those who walked in stressed (University of Pittsburgh).
100. The last full moon on Halloween was in 2020. The next one is not until 2039 (The Old Farmer's Almanac).