[ thunder crashes ] >> narrator: it's coming. there's no escape.
>> [ screams ]
>> narrator: on halloween, the
veil between this world and the
next will lift.
and then...
all hell breaks loose.
people have been scaring each
other for as long as there's
been a halloween.
but how long is that?
where does it come from?
and why do we put on disguises
and carve jack-o'-lanterns to
indulge our darkest fears?
unlocking the secrets of
halloween means discovering how
it all began thousands of years
ago.
so lock the doors, dim the
lights, and don't be scared, as
we dig up the real story of
halloween.
how can you describe halloween without sounding insane? masked children come to our
doors and threaten us.
in return, we give them candy.
but why?
why do we carve faces into
fruit, then light candles inside
them?
and why do we adorn our homes
with coffins and tombstones?
the truth is we take great
pleasure in scaring ourselves...
to death.
>> halloween is about being someone else. it's about getting outside your
own skin.
and i think we tolerate it because we know it's one night. >> narrator: this impulse to
confront our fears of life and
of death and make sport of
them -- it's ancient, and so are
our treasured halloween
traditions.
[ clock ticking ]
when did halloween begin?
>> and its ancient origins go back to the old celtic calendar, and the old celtic tribes
divided the year between a light
half and a dark half.
and samhain, their ancient holiday, was the precursor to our halloween.
it was the beginning of the dark
half.
>> narrator: thousands of years
ago, the celts, one of europe's
early tribes, celebrated their
samhain harvest festival with
bonfires on the night of
october 31st to welcome their
new year.
for ancient peoples, harvest was
a matter of life and death.
if crops failed, people starved.
death was always close.
>> it was a bit of a warning, you know? it's gonna get cold and dark.
gather together, come home, and
don't send anybody out alone in
the dark.
>> narrator: but the celts
believed there was even more to
samhain.
>> what marked samhain in this transition from light to dark was that time and space became
permeable, flexible.
and so that spirits not only of the dead but of the past or of other realities could sort of
wander into our reality, and
humans could wander out and get
lost in the other world as well.
>> the veil between life and death was at its thinnest, and the living and the dead could
commingle.
and that's at the root of all the halloween celebrations. >> narrator: stories persist of
people on samhain night getting
trapped in the other world and
of the dead appearing among the
living.
but the truth is we know
precious little about samhain.
we can only guess that their bonfires likely drew one familiar halloween icon -- a
thing familiar yet frightening
to many -- the bat.
>> before there was electricity,
the only way you would have seen
a bat would have been by the
firelight.
and, in fact, you probably would have seen it around the fire because bats eat insects and
insects are attracted to the
light.
>> narrator: bats come out at
night, and nighttime was scary
time.
so, if bats are the best and
baddest part of your halloween,
you might just credit ancient
people like the celts.
and they weren't the only
ancient culture with creepy
traditions.
others also looked to their
dead.
>> many, many cultures sort of
set aside a day or a couple of
days to ritually celebrate and
recognize the dead.
an interesting thing is you find
a lot of them at about the same
time period, especially in
agricultural societies, because,
if you think about it, you know,
spring -- things come up out of
the ground, they're very green.
you harvest in the middle of the
summer.
and towards the fall, when it
gets towards winter, things die.
>> narrator: but how did these ancient traditions survive into our modern era?
in western culture, they were
preserved by, of all people,
christians.
in a bizarre twist of history,
as christianity spread, it
adopted and reimagined pagan
folkways rather than try to
stamp them out.
this made it easier to convert
pagans.
a key pagan festival destined to
get a christian makeover was
lemuria, when celebrants
placated the dead culminating on
may 13th.
>> of all the different days that they have in the roman calendar to celebrate the dead,
it was the spookiest.
so, on the lemuria, what are called the larvae, the ghosts of the departed, would come up
and haunt people.
>> narrator: to quell the dead,
pagan romans poured milk onto
their graves or offered them
little cakes.
but the church co-opted lemuria
in 609 a.d., turning may 13th
into all saints' day, a day to
honor the most holy of dead
christians.
>> setting aside this day was an
attempt to christianize this
very pagan festival, and yet at
the same time, what it did was
it kept a lot of the same themes
going.
>> narrator: the christianized
version of lemuria was such a
success that church leaders made
a decision that eventually gave
rise to halloween.
they moved all saints', or
hallows day, to november 1st
to drain the life out of pagan
samhain.
because samhain fell on the
night of october 31st, before
all hallows day on november 1st,
people started calling samhain
"all hallows evening" -- the
evening before all hallows day.
this shortened into
"all hallows even" and finally
into "halloween."
and then, to be safe, the church
went one step further, adding a
holiday to honor not just saints
but everyday christians.
november 2nd became
all souls' day, a
church-sanctioned holiday to
honor the departed.
>> this is real important for
halloween because this is where
halloween gets its association
with dead souls, death, and the
supernatural again.
>> narrator: so, thank the
church for inspiring the creepy
essentials of halloween.
but wait -- there's more.
the church also helped establish
the tradition of
trick-or-treating, sort of.
it all started during the
middle ages on all souls' day,
when priests told christians to
pray for souls trapped between
heaven and hell in a netherworld
they called "purgatory."
>> purgatory was not a pleasant
place.
it's not hell, it's not as bad
as hell is, but it's still
probably pretty fiery.
souls are kind of suffering
there.
luckily, there is something that
you could do.
you could offer up prayers for
them.
>> narrator: how did souls get out of purgatory? according to the church, if
enough prayers were offered, a
soul would fly up into heaven.
this led to a medieval custom that bears more than a striking resemblance to our modern
trick or treat.
children would go souling,
begging for soul cakes -- spiced
cakes filled with raisins.
in return for these treats, the
beggars would offer up prayers
for souls trapped in purgatory.
while this forerunner to
trick or treat became an
preoccupation for medieval
christians, so did another
future essential of halloween...
witches.
>> it made perfect sense for people in medieval times to believe that there were demons
and witches.
and if there were demons and
witches and they were
responsible for bad things in
the world, it made sense that
you hunt them down and you kill
them.
that was their world view. >> narrator: a witch panic in the 16th century helped
establish the look of the
character that for many
epitomizes halloween.
almost always women, witches
were seen as in league with
satan.
>> they were probably the
healers who had cures and
folklore passed down orally
through generations.
and at some point, that becomes very suspicious for whatever reason to the religious people
around them.
and a lot of the symbols that were associated with these women -- who probably often
lived alone, may have been
somewhat eccentric, of course --
end up becoming associated with
witches.
>> narrator: over time, as more
and more women were accused of
witchcraft, their practical
kitchen tools acquired sinister
dimensions...
and became model halloween
icons.
even something as mundane as a
broom became an instrument of
evil...
as well as handy transportation.
another accessory in every
witch's lair was perfect for
brewing devilish potions --
the cauldron.
>> cauldrons become very
popular.
again, it was something that
every household had in medieval
ages.
it was your basic cooking
implement.
>> narrator: the pointed witch's
hat was a variation on a
medieval countrywoman's hat.
and, of course, the mysterious
lurking killer with the glowing
eyes -- the cat.
>> it's not surprising that cats
are associated with witches and
halloween.
cats can be a little enigmatic. you don't really know what's going on in their head.
also, they used to hang out near the hearth and by the brooms, and so they became associated
with witchcraft and with
halloween.
>> narrator: black cats and
witches, graveyards and
ghosts -- the spooky elements of
america's great gothic holiday
were taking shape.
these ghoulish icons would soon
make their way to the new world,
where they'd help create the
extravaganza we know today.
[ crow caws ] >> narrator: bonfires... worshiping the dead...
begging for treats.
the elements of our modern
halloween were haunting europe
at the dawn of the 17th century.
but they hadn't yet collected
into a spooky secular holiday.
history would now start
consolidating them and give life
to an odd celebration of death.
>> it's death that makes this holiday, and whether it's the threat of death if there is a
bad harvest, the end of one
order and the beginning of a
new, this idea of the endless
cycle of life and death and
renewal is part of a lot of
holidays, not just halloween.
>> narrator: this period saw the
continued influence of one of
halloween's most colorful icons,
the mask.
it often appeared in tandem with
another halloween tradition --
destructiveness.
rowdy beggars at all hallows eve also guzzled their share of alcohol.
and demands for food and drink
became more threatening.
masks helped hide their
identities.
>> in britain, they got into some very particular forms that involved dressing in costumes
and going house to house to
present these little plays.
and at the end of the
performance, they would be
rewarded with food and sometimes
money.
>> narrator: was this trick or treat? not quite.
but the resemblance was there.
in 17th-century england, many of
these customs survived only in
rural areas.
but they would soon turn up in
the city streets, thanks to a
pro-catholic terrorist named
guy fawkes.
on november 5, 1605, fawkes
tried to blow up london's
house of lords with 36 kegs of
gunpowder.
>> guy fawkes was tried, found guilty, and hanged. and according to legend, his
body was then drawn and
quartered, and the pieces were
thrown into a fire.
>> narrator: the next year, on the anniversary of the failed plot, and every year that
followed, the children of london
mocked the memory of guy fawkes
by causing chaos in the
streets...
parading, begging, and building
bonfires.
today, all over england, this is
called guy fawkes day, or
bonfire night.
>> now, guy fawkes day fell on
november 5th, which was very
close to halloween, so a lot of
the energy that was focused on
halloween sort of shifted toward
guy fawkes day.
>> narrator: while it wasn't our
halloween yet, it had all the
signs -- children and adults
alike taking advantage of the
darkness and letting loose.
but would this pagan form of
celebration make its way across
the atlantic to disrupt the
sanctuary of the new world?
not if colonial puritans had
their way.
>> narrator: for the puritans of
new england, the supernatural
was a dark, menacing force, not
a harmless superstition worthy
of inspiring a holiday.
despite their efforts to kill
the halloween tradition before
it took hold, there were a few
guy fawkes celebrations that
made their way to the shores of
america.
other settlers tolerated or even
embraced the traditions that
threatened the puritans.
and seeds were planted for the
holiday that would morph into
our american halloween.
>> for example, there's an 1833
description of a halloween --
not even so much a party but
just a small gathering where
they told ghost stories around a
fire.
>> narrator: but now one more
spooky standby, the image of a
spirit or ghost, would join
witches and skeletons in a
macabre halloween dance.
by the mid-19th century, america
was primed for a much darker
holiday...
having endured four long years
of civil war that ended in 1865
with over a half million dead.
>> there were so many unclaimed, unknown dead bodies that the civil war left behind that this
country was obsessed with death.
and mostly it was that so many of these soldiers died unknown. we don't know what happened to
them.
so, there was a huge sense of,
"they could come back.
maybe they're not dead."
it makes perfect sense that
people would tell more ghost
stories.
and the very first halloween
ghost stories were about people
coming back home.
>> narrator: it's at this time
that america's halloween story
really begins.
after the civil war, when scots
and irish immigrants brought
their rural, old-world halloween
customs with them, they helped
to establish even more american
halloween traditions.
>> for the scots, it was a
little bit of a scarier night.
until fairly late, we're still
talking about the appearance of
bogeys on halloween.
>> narrator: bogeys, or
bogeymen, were sort of
amorphous pestering ghosts that
plagued children, hiding under
beds or tapping on windows or
lurking by a gate or turnstile.
>> there was a belief that there
was a bogey on every stile,
which meant on halloween night,
you could cross any gate, and
there might be something sitting
there, waiting to get you.
>> narrator: halloween's signature symbol, the jack-o'-lantern, also began as
a european tradition.
but the prototype wasn't carved from a pumpkin. >> there's a great legend about
a character named
jack-o'-lantern.
>> and jack was a troublemaker.
but he was so bad, he even
managed to get himself thrown
out of hell, which is not an
easy thing to do.
>> but the devil did decide to
have pity on him and scooped up
an ember from the fires of hell
and gave it to him.
>> so jack takes the ember, and
he puts it inside a hollowed-out
turnip, and he walks around, and
that becomes the legend of
jack-o'-lantern.
>> narrator: in one age-old
european practice, children
would carve their own
jack-o'-lanterns out of turnips
and light them with candles.
>> the first reference we have in the united states to jack-o'-lantern comes from
nathaniel hawthorne, and he's
writing in "twice-told tales,"
and he's describing someone's
very tattered coat, full of
holes, and when you hold it up
to the light, it shines like a
jack-o'-lantern would.
>> narrator: americans improved on the jack-o'-lantern tradition.
they substituted big, round
pumpkins for the old world's
hard, little turnips, and
halloween finally had its
trademark.
>> narrator: pumpkins are
generally harvested around halloween, and kids realized
jack-o'-lanterns could be a
prankster's best weapon on
halloween night.
>> kids figured out this great
thing they could do.
they could take a pumpkin, and
you could hollow it out, and you
put a candle in it.
and then you take that pumpkin,
and you put it on a stick, and
you put a sheet over it.
and you'd parade around.
you could put it in front of a
window or something, and it's
really a pretty scary picture.
>> narrator: jack-o'-lanterns
soon became the face of
halloween.
but scots and irish immigrants
also brought with them the more
rambunctious, stone-throwing,
prank-playing halloween reveling
to america.
and on halloween night, at the
dawn of the 20th century, there
was a whole dark world of
trouble just waiting for
american boys.
>> narrator: halloween had been on a dark and scary journey from its origins with the celts
centuries ago.
in the middle ages, it became a
christian holiday honoring the
dead.
but by the 16th century, it was
turning into a rowdy kids'
celebration marked by begging
and pranks.
by the 1800s, halloween had
even moved into cities and towns
across america.
but the ghastly face of
halloween was reimagined in
gruesome shades of orange and
black at the turn of the 20th
century.
for the first time, artists of
the era brought together all
things scary and linked them to
halloween -- skeletons and
spider webs...
jack-o'-lanterns and bats.
they established the look of
halloween that we still use
today.
among these icons are white-sheeted ghosts... >> the sheet that a ghost wears
derives from the winding sheet,
the shroud that corpses were
traditionally wrapped in before
burial.
>> narrator: ...and jack-o'-lanterns. >> the big grin still connotes
the rictus of a death's head, as
does the triangular nose hole.
and even when it seems kind of
jolly, death is still lurking
there in the imagery.
>> narrator: horned devils came
from medieval depictions of
satan...
and witches from witch-hunting
hysteria that swept through
europe and puritan america.
>> witches became very popular in the early part of the 20th century, which is why they
naturally became linked to
halloween.
but there's actually a change in the way we perceive witches. the witches of the 19th century
were old.
they had big noses, and there
were warts.
and the witches in the
20th century are actually kind
of attractive.
it makes halloween just a
little -- not only scary, but
also a little naughty.
>> narrator: but even as halloween was dressing its old customs in new costumes, it was
also creating new traditions...
bad ones.
was halloween in the early 20th century getting out of hand?
to the dismay of authorities and
property owners, the answer was
"yes."
>> it was whatever you could
think of that was a bunch of
mischief.
back in those days, people had
buggies.
the bigger kids tried to take a buggy and put it up on the haystack.
and there's about a half a dozen of the guys, and they just kind of pushed and pushed it up the
haystack.
it was a lot of fun.
oh, we never did anything that
was really destructive.
mostly tricks.
>> narrator: but for others,
those tricks were more
destructive.
pranks, usually committed by
adolescent boys, plagued cities
like chicago and philadelphia.
by the 1920s, halloween in
america was turning into a
crisis.
tricks on halloween night were
out of hand.
>> the destructive pranks went
beyond just smashing pumpkins.
kids would take bars of soap,
and they'd put them in the rails
for streetcars so that the
streetcars would derail and
people would actually get hurt.
they would take the steps in
front of people's doors and move
them so when people walked
outside, they would fall over
and get hurt.
they would set fires.
they would throw stones through
windows.
i mean, this is really
destructive stuff.
>> narrator: in rural
communities, pranksters took
wagons apart and reassembled
them on roofs.
they removed gates on farm
fences so that animals could
escape.
this particular prank was so
popular that in some places,
the night before halloween was
called "gate night."
in other cities, it was
"mischief night" or even
"hell night."
halloween pranks during the
great depression may have been,
in part, a product of the
desperation of the time -- an
excuse for trouble-making.
but there was already trouble
everywhere, and many communities
couldn't afford to feed their
own, much less clean up
destructive messes.
>> the halloween of 1933 was
actually labeled
"black halloween" in a lot of
newspapers because of all of the
destruction that the cities
incurred.
the kids were no longer just doing innocent, silly things. now they were smashing light
bulbs.
they were setting fire to buildings. they were smashing car windows.
>> narrator: if halloween were
to survive, it would have to
change.
>> schools and police
departments and other civic
groups consciously and very
actively promoted the idea of
taming halloween.
>> and so they started to invent all sorts of things for kids to do to divert them -- town-wide
parties, costume contests,
games -- everything that you
could think of to get the kids
away from pulling tricks and
into the light.
>> narrator: novelty companies like dennison and beistle helped out these civic efforts.
dennison published a series of
halloween guides called
"bogie books" that suggested
ways of turning halloween from a
prank night into a party night.
>> dennison was one of the first
companies that realized there
was money to be made off of
halloween.
they started to put their own
halloween materials out for
retail sale in drugstores all
over america.
>> narrator: they also made
masks and paper costumes.
this was a first.
it was the first time that
costumes were specifically made
and marketed for halloween.
before that, costumes had all
been homemade.
>> when i was a kid, there
wasn't halloween outfits like
you wear now.
so, basically, you wore your
overalls or your jeans or sloppy
clothes.
but you didn't go downtown and
buy a special outfit just for
halloween.
just anything, you know, to make
yourself a little...
conspicuous.
>> narrator: paper costumes were
fancy and an improvement on the
homemade variety, but they had
their drawbacks.
>> unfortunately, you know, a
lot of that paper was flammable,
and i was surprised at how many
newspaper clippings i came
across of costumes catching
fire.
>> narrator: soon, other
manufacturers looking to tap
into the kid market for
halloween costumes began making
more durable disguises.
>> sears' first boxed costumes
came around 1930, and then it
went from there.
and the costumes came off of
radio-show characters and the
funny papers.
it's costumes for parties,
costumes for wild, town-wide
parties and for school parties
and church parties.
halloween was a big social
occasion.
>> narrator: halloween parades
also helped drag the holiday out
from the shadows and into the
public arena.
allentown, pennsylvania, may
have had the first parade in
1905, but others soon
followed -- toms river,
new jersey, in 1919...
anoka, minnesota, in 1920.
anoka has held its parade every
year since.
in fact, the city now bills
itself the "halloween capital of
the world."
each of these local efforts to
tame halloween worked to some
extent.
but what halloween really
needed was a whole new
tradition.
and it would soon get one.
but this new tradition would
prove to be a variation on a
very old halloween theme.
>> narrator: "trick or treat!" that phrase still triggers cascades of candy into plastic
pumpkins and pillowcases across
america on the night of
october 31st.
and though the custom goes back
centuries, the phrase "trick or
treat" is probably less than
100 years old.
>> "trick or treat" is amazingly
new.
people think "trick or treat" goes back for centuries, and it doesn't.
"trick or treat" is actually
less than 80 years old,
probably.
the term derives from pranking that was very widespread and destructive in america in the
20th century.
and at some point, somebody
came up with the brilliant idea
of buying off these pranksters.
>> narrator: homeowners bribed
rowdy kids with homemade
treats, such as popcorn balls
and candy apples, to avoid
getting pranked, or tricked.
in 1939 the phrase and the
custom turned up in print.
>> doris hudson moss published an article in american home magazine that talked about the
success she had having a
halloween open house for the
kids in her neighborhood.
she didn't get tricked.
she gave them sweets.
it all worked. >> narrator: with the new custom came new treats, not so much
homemade goodies like popcorn
balls.
now kids got store-bought,
prepackaged candies --
mars bars, reese's cups, and
good old hershey's chocolate.
candy finally killed the rowdy
halloween, and now the time was
right for the reinvented holiday
to hit hollywood.
>> [ quacking ]
[ doorbell buzzes ]
>> uh-oh. the boys!
[ laughs ]
hello, boys!
>> trick or treat!
>> ah!
for you...
and you...
and you.
[ chuckles ]
>> thank you, uncle donald.
[ firecrackers exploding ]
>> narrator: halloween was
becoming a pop-culture
phenomenon, a national festival
attended by millions,
celebrating the joys of
scavenging for mass-produced
candy.
>> i loved halloween when i was a kid. i participated in it.
i loved the rituals of it.
i loved the pranks of it.
i loved the mischief of it. i loved going to houses and dressing up and getting candy,
and then there were parties,
and it was just fantastic.
>> narrator: then, in 1966,
halloween found a home where all
pop culture ultimately goes --
tv.
halloween's stature zoomed off
the charts when america went
trick-or-treating with
charlie brown.
>> the whole idea of the great pumpkin, of course, came from the comic strip, when
sparky schulz decided that it
would be very funny if one of
the kids got his holidays mixed
up.
and so that's how linus ends up in the pumpkin patch every year.
>> who are you writing to,
linus?
>> this is the time of year to
write to the great pumpkin.
on halloween night, the
great pumpkin rises out of his
pumpkin patch and flies through
the air with his bag of toys for
all the children.
>> you must be crazy.
when are you going to stop
believing in something that
isn't true?
>> when you stop believing in
that fellow with the red suit
and the white beard!
>> narrator: television -- and
america's most popular comic
strip -- had given halloween its
unofficial seal of approval.
the holiday had never in its
entire history been so
mainstream.
but halloween-themed cartoons
aimed at kids were one thing.
a movie for adults with
halloween as its theme was
another.
nobody had ever tried it
before -- that is, until
director john carpenter took a
stab at it in 1978 with the
classic "halloween."
>> the idea for calling my film "halloween" came from the distributor.
and when he said it, i thought,
"you know, he's absolutely
right.
there's never been, really, a halloween-themed film." it's one of those eye-openers.
"wow. why didn't i think of that
years ago?
what a great idea."
>> narrator: carpenter's
$325,000 film would spawn a
franchise grossing more than
$500 million.
it broke new ground, elevating
the horror film from "b"-movie
status to respected genre.
and completely by accident, the
film would also redefine our
attitudes about halloween masks.
it started when the wardrobe
budget forced the crew to create
a mask for the villain,
michael myers, for next to
nothing.
>> the production designer ran
up to bert wheeler's magic shop
on hollywood boulevard and
bought this captain kirk from
"star trek" mask, which didn't
look anything like
william shatner.
just looked -- this strange
face, elongated face.
but it was spray-painted and
fixed up a little bit.
it was distorted, which is
perfect.
it's kind of written that way in
the script, as wearing a face.
>> narrator: the
bargain-basement mask and the
villain behind it soon became
another halloween icon.
>> michael myers still -- even though the original movie came out in 1978, it still remains
one of the most popular
halloween characters of all
time.
>> this idea of the masked
stalker menacing young people at
halloween -- it shifted the
focus of halloween away from
ghosts and goblins to human
villainy.
>> narrator: but this nondescript mask did much more than that.
it helped to redefine the limits
of what a halloween mask could
be.
and it ushered in a new face of
halloween -- one for a new
millennium.
[ thunder crashes ] >> narrator: for hundreds of years, masks and costumes have
been a way for partyers to
disguise themselves...
and now it's a
multi-million-dollar business.
one halloween-themed store --
burbank, california's,
halloweentown -- is so popular,
it's open 12 months of the year,
satisfying customers' need for
disguise.
>> [ roars ]
>> we've had this business for 10 years now, and we really wanted to make it special, so we
decided to open a year-round,
permanent store with ultimate
spooky shopping environment.
it really puts people in the mood to shop for halloween. >> narrator: halloween stuff is
all over the store, but the
heart of halloweentown's
business is masks.
>> we have dozens of masks.
we have the best zombies you
can find, the best clowns.
>> masks and disguises have always been great ways to let you off the hook in terms of
your behavior.
with an acting-out kind of holiday like halloween, of course, it's perfect.
>> when i was a kid, i loved
masks, but usually all you could
find at the local stores were
crappy plastic flimsy masks that
lost their shape.
but as time went on, it really
evolved into an art form to
where there's a lot of time
spent in the sculpting and the
painting, and now it's to the
point where you can get an
expensive high-end mask that
almost rivals movie quality.
>> narrator: and wayne toth
would know.
he's a special-effects artist
for major motion pictures.
>> we have a lot of customers
that like higher-end stuff or
high-quality stuff, so we go out
of our way to get that.
we have high-end costumes, fancy
jackets, and all kinds of
accessories you really couldn't
find anywhere else.
we try and make it so no matter
what you're looking for, you can
find it here.
>> narrator: today's upscale
masks and costumes are a far cry
from the generic devils,
witches, skeletons, and ghosts
of the 1960s.
but that's the decade when the
halloween wardrobe began to
change.
hollywood started to influence
what kids wore, transforming
them into their favorite tv and
movie characters.
today that trend has escalated
to an obsession.
film franchises like
"a nightmare on elm street,"
"scream," and "halloween" are
inspiring growing legions of
kids to dress to kill.
>> to wear the mask of the killer or of the ghost, of the skeleton, it gives a kid a sense
of a lot of power and also of
safety, 'cause the monster can't
get you if you are the monster
for that moment.
>> narrator: crazed-killer masks are just part of halloween's evolving taste in costumes.
the only rule now is that
there are no rules.
masks take their inspiration
from pop culture, religion,
politics -- you name it.
and a growing number of faces
behind them belong not to kids
but adults.
>> halloween has become a huge adult activity, and i don't think that was the case 50, 60
years ago.
but it's been, again, a specific day set aside where you can be somebody that you normally
aren't.
you can get behind a mask, you
can wear clothes you would never
wear during the rest of the
year, and people enjoy these.
>> narrator: truth is our
21st-century halloween is as
much a holiday for adults as it
is a holiday for kids.
>> you get those children who are now grown up, and they become very nostalgic for
halloween, so halloween shifts
again, starts to become more of
an adult holiday.
>> narrator: halloween businesses now cater to anyone who wants to get into the spirit
of the holiday, with parties and
halloween-themed venues such as
haunted houses.
>> 50 years ago, when you were too old to trick-or-treat, you probably had to stay home and
hand out candy.
there was nothing else for you to do. now there is a vast and
imaginative haunted-house
industry just for you.
and there's something like
4,000 haunted houses in the
united states every year.
[ girl screams ]
[ girls screaming ]
>> oh!
>> i loved haunted houses. they fascinated me. they terrified me as a kid.
>> narrator: but haunted houses aren't the only place to find adults getting out on halloween.
in places like new york city's
greenwich village halloween
parade and west hollywood's
halloween carnival, the holiday
takes a walk on the wild and
naughty side.
>> of course, the gay halloween
parade is now a big fixture in
san francisco, in los angeles,
and, of course, a big part of
the new york celebration.
but it's this idea of turning
the world on its head and being
who you aren't or would like to
be.
>> oh, yeah!
>> again, it's that mercurial
american obsession with
self-transformation.
and that's the thing, i think,
that really ignited halloween in
america.
>> narrator: this sexually
liberated halloween sometimes
crosses the line from adults to
adults-only.
>> if you look at the costumes that are sold to adults these days, the costumes for women are
all kind of borderline
prostitute costumes -- you know,
the sexy nurse, the sexy maid,
the sexy anything.
>> narrator: now grown-ups are taking it one step further. they stock up on specially
packaged halloween novelty candy
and join their children going
door to door on halloween night.
these trick-or-treaters of the
1970s and '80s now seize the
opportunity to relive their
childhood halloweens, dressing
in full costume, supposedly to
keep a watchful eye on their
kids.
and just as halloween has scared
kids for years, halloween scares
parents, too.
they fear sending their kids
out unsupervised into a hostile
world full of poisoned candy and
razor-blade-riddled apples.
but they really shouldn't be.
>> i grew up hearing about razor
blades in apples myself, and
it's clearly what you would call
a contemporary legend.
another term is "urban legend."
there's a great societal unease
about this idea that we're
telling our kids to go take
candy from strangers, so there's
a lot of stories about razor
blades in candied apples and
these sorts of things.
and parents every year get very,
very worried about it.
did razor blades in apples ever
happen?
i believe there are a couple of
cases.
but, of course, you can ask
which came first, you know --
the story or the action?
>> narrator: razor blades in
apples...
jack-o'-lanterns...
soul cakes.
they make up the legends, the
texture of the halloween we
know.
today halloween wears many
masks.
it's a day for adults to push
their boundaries a little.
>> clearly, a lot of women want
to have a very sexy side of
them, and it's only on halloween
that they bring it out.
maybe, you know, they could do
it a little more often.
>> narrator: yet halloween still
remains the domain of kids.
>> when you're a kid, you had
one night a year where you were
in charge.
you got to dress up, you got to
be something that you usually
weren't, and you kind of even
got paid for the privilege of
this.
it was an amazing holiday.
>> halloween doesn't like to
have its energies tamed, you
know?
the rebellious aspect's gonna
pop up somewhere.
>> narrator: look close enough,
and you'll see that halloween is
a showcase of everything the
human race fears.
through the centuries, we've learned to live with what scares us most.
and now, on october 31st, we
turn our fears into fun.
so, beware...
of haunted houses and creaking
doors...
billowing sheets and full moons.
and don't be surprised if a
smiling jack-o'-lantern wishes
you...
happy halloween.
ha ha ha ha.