Welcome to Halloween 2002 at Penney's Place!  You're in for a spook of a good time while you're here, so have fun!

A Little Halloween History

The word 'Halloween' is a corruption of 'All Hallows Eve' , which is a celebration of the Catholic Church, and is also called 'All Saint's Day'. In the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year. Eventually, the two merged into a single observance which became Halloween. According to the Celts, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.

Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

Probably a better explanation of why the Celts extinguished their fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that all the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach.

The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840's by Irish immigrants fleeing their country's potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates.

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. As Halloween eventually became a holiday mostly for children, it became the custom to give out candy as a treat, creating the holiday that we have today.

Let's Have Some Halloween Fun!

Ben and Jerry's Virtual Pumpkin Patch     Meddybemp's Ghost Walk

Feed The Hungry Ghost     Monster Match     Mystery Message  

What's Halloween without a visit to a haunted house? Here are a few virtual haunted houses for you to check out...

The Haunted House at Bryback Manor     Haunted New Orleans

The Halloween Chamber of Horrors     Hollo-Hill Haunting     Tia's Haunted House

Great Halloween Adoptions for Your Web Site!

Billy Bear's Candy Corn Critters    

Amanda's Page Guardians

Monsters from Michyland

My Halloween Quilt for 2002             Halloween Gifts from Internet Friends