Halloween is on the way

It's becoming the most famous, and controversial lawn mower in North Carolina. A homeowner, just wanting to pull a little Halloween prank, created a scene that prompted at least one call to 911 and thousands of hits on web sites across the world.

The Halloween decor at a home along Organ Church Road in eastern Rowan County scared a driver so much that he called 911, nearly prompting a full emergency response.

The call came into the county's 911 Communication Center Monday morning after the caller stated that he saw what appeared to be a man trapped under a riding lawn mower.

Luckily, someone else quickly let the 911 folks know it was a decoration, just in time to stop what would have been an emergency response.

As seen in the pictures taken Monday by WBTV, the scene does appear realistic. The blood covered arms and legs stick out from beneath a blood spattered lawn mower on a large patch of grass.

Chris Deaton's Halloween display has been getting another response around town, and it's been a big one...

"It's something to talk about around town," said Wendy Bethea, the clerk on duty at Cheesman's Store. "I've had a couple customers talking about it, being out there."

And online, the story has hit CNN, the Daily Mail in the UK, and it's gotten lots of comments on wbtv.com, most questioning whether the macabre decoration goes too far.

"I think it's harmless, I think it's fun, Halloween," Bethea added.

That's what most seem to say, others think a Happy Halloween sign would have made it better...or maybe just some more calm and sedate, like the gruesome scenes on Faith Road.

Chris Deaton wasn't available today. His mother told WBTV that he had the same decoration up close to the house last year, but decided to move it to the road this year.

He has been amused at all the attention it has gotten.

Seance OnThe Internet?

Wondering what to do different this Halloween? There are 2 seances on the internet you may be interested in.Stephen Wagner brought out the details of a customary Halloween seance and James Rand the famous Magician/Skeptic ill lead another made up of Magicians and,Skeptics...A first time event.

"It was the night of October 31, 1936. Halloween night. The men and women sat at the round table with joined hands. They awaited the message - the message they had hoped for every Halloween night for the past 10 years. But the message did not come.

Finally, one woman rose from the table and announced to the others - and to a listening radio audience - "Houdini did not come through," she said. "My last hope is gone. I do not believe that Houdini can come back to me, or to anyone...The Houdini Shrine has burned for ten years. I now, reverently... turn out the light. It is finished. Good night, Harry!"

The woman was Bess Houdini, wife of the famed magician and escape artist. And this was the last séance she would participate in to try to contact her dead husband. But the séances themselves did not stop. Every October 31, from 1927 up to the present day, a séance has been conducted with hopes of contacting the spirit of Harry Houdini. So far, the great Houdini has not made his presence known.(Picture of Harry and Bess Houdini)

The Houdini séance has been a Halloween tradition since the first anniversary of his death. The magician died at the age of 52 on October 31, 1926 from peritonitis - an internal infection - as the result of a ruptured appendix.

Shortly before his death, Houdini made a pact with Bess that if he could, he would return and make contact with her from the other side. They devised a coded message that only he and Bess knew; this would prove that it really was Houdini breaking through from the afterlife. But after 10 séances in 10 years, Bess had not received her beloved husband's personal message.


Even though Bess gave up the séances herself, she asked magician Walter B. Gibson to carry on the October 31 tradition. For many years, Gibson, along with several other magicians, held the séances at the Magic Towne House in New York City. Countless other "unofficial" Houdini séances have been held by local psychics across the country throughout the years - all in good fun, but with no definitive proof of so much as a "hello" from Harry Houdini.

Today, the official Houdini Séance is held at The Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. And true to the times, they have been conducting séances on the Internet.
The Halloween Houdini Seance on the Internet - Oct 31.
The Halloween Houdini Seance, which has a been a tradition for the past 80 years since the great magicians untimely death, has now moved to cyberspace. The seances, held by Houdini's wife for the first ten years after his death, and then passed on by her, will be held on the Internet for 24 hours on Halloween on the anniversary of his death. Scranton's Houdini Museum, the only museum in the world entirely devoted to Houdini, is asking everyone on the web have a place in their mind the great feats of Houdini sometime during those twenty four hours.

The Houdini Museum, a non-profit organization, has a large web site;The museum has won many awards for its Internet site including being chosen as one of the "7 Wonders of the Web." ...The Houdini Museum can be found on the Internet by typing in the words Houdini Museum Scranton on any of the major Internet search engines. The actual web address is http://www.Pocono.org/houdini.html

The Houdini Museum has been in Scranton for nine years, and open to the general public for four years in the Scranton/Pocono area. Prior to that a part of the exhibit was on display for 13 years at the famous Magic Towne House in New York City. The Magic Towne House was the location of the Houdini Seances in New York. New York City was where Houdini lived for most of his life, until his death. "

http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa103000a.htm

"This Halloween, The James Randi Educational Foundation and WeirdThings.com present a never-before-attempted experiment. In front of a live internet audience, a group of prominent skeptics and magicians will try to make contact with the spirit of Harry Houdini, the world's most famous magician and challenger of the supernatural.

What makes this attempt unique is that it's being conducted by skeptics and magicians in the hopes that if contact from beyond the grave is possible, Houdini would prefer to make it with skeptics and magicians like himself.
World famous magician and skeptic James Randi will oversee the seance and will help supervise the attempt to communicate.

The seance will be conducted by magician and publisher of WeirdThings.com Andrew Mayne, WeirdThings.com editor-in-chief Justin Robert Young and magician and Scam School star Brian Brushwood.

The seance will consist of several tests for attempted communication. Words and images provided by prominent magicians and skeptics and held by James Randi will be attempted to be divined through various supernatural means including Ouija boards, automatic writing and spirit photography..."
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/jref-news/745-the-houdini-seance-live-on-the-internet.html

Before eHarmony It Was Halloween

Customs most Trick or Treaters may not know about Halloween:
But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today's trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday--with luck, by next Halloween!--be married

In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it. In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl's future husband. (In some versions of this legend, confusingly, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.) Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night, she would dream about her future husband. Young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands' initials; tried to learn about their futures by peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water; and stood in front of mirrors in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their husbands' faces.


Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry; at others, the first successful apple bobber would be the first down the asile.

Over the course of hundreds of years, early Christianity would attempt to suppress and replace the Celtic festival with All Saints' Day, which was celebrated on November 1, a holy day of obligation to honor saints and martyrs in the Christian faith. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. But even the powerful influence of the church was unable to squelch the supernatural festival, and Halloween endured and flourished over the centuries to become the sensationalistic celebration it is today in the U.S.


http://wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm


The second illustration is "Vintage PC Courting Woman With Parasol and Flowered Hat Man with Bowler Hat and Looking his best"by christmasangel
visit http://christmasangel.etsy.com

Customs Of Halloween

CUSTOMS The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes," made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul's passage to heaven.

The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.

According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.

The Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns" originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember.

So, although some cults may have adopted Halloween as their favorite "holiday," the day itself did not grow out of evil practices. It grew out of the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans. And today, even many churches have Halloween parties or pumpkin carving events for the kids. After all, the day itself is only as evil as one cares to make it.
http://wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm

Customs the Trick or Treaters may have forgotten in the next post.Sort of Before E Harmony..

Mystery And Superstition Of Halloween

Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.


Today's Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into cats.
We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred; it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe.
And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.

Hidden Spirits Game
http://www.history.com/content/halloween/hidden-spirits-game


Mote about the customs in next post.

The not so frightening ghost illustration is available in my shop"
http://nursesnaturally.etsy.com

Origins Of Halloween

A few excerpts from The History Channel's wonderful site about Halloween.along with some information from S Wagner's About Paranormal newsletter..to tell about this second only to Christmas Holiday in favorite and Commercial recognition in America.

"
HALLOWEEN ORIGINS

Whether one is a believer or a skeptic,(regarding the paranormal) Halloween in the U.S. might be the one time of the year that both stand united in simply having a good time in the shadow of such reported phenomena.
The origins of Halloween itself lay in supernatural beliefs and an ancient Celtic festival that dates back some 2,000 years. Originally called Samhain (pronounced sow-in), the festival originated amidst the region now known as the United Kingdom and celebrated the one night each year that the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became indistinguishable. On this night, the Celts believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to Earth for good or for bad and allowed Druid priests to additionally interact with them for the wellbeing of them all."
http://paranormal.about.com/od/paranormalgeneralinfo/a/aa102508.htm?nl=1


History.com
"The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities.

During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Halloween.

As European immigrants came to America, they brought their varied Halloween customs with them. Because of the rigid Protestant belief systems that characterized early New England, celebration of Halloween in colonial times was extremely limited there.
It was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups, as well as the American Indians, meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included "play parties," public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other's fortunes, dance, and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.
Halloween: Pumpkins on steps

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland's potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today's "trick-or-treat" tradition. Young women believed that, on Halloween, they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings, or mirrors."

More in the next post about some of the superstitions around and about Halloween