Halloween: what you didn't know about it!

The modern holiday of Halloween has its roots in the ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain, a pagan festival of the autumn harvest.

Halloween is a celebration of the strange and supernatural, surrounded by curious traditions like trick-or-treating and pumpkin carving. Here are some interesting facts about the origins of some current practices and other fun details about this unique holiday.

1. 🔮 Death of Harry Houdini: The famous magician Harry Houdini died on Halloween in 1926, adding an air of mystery to the date.
2. 🕷️ Samhainophobia is the fear of Halloween.
3. 🍂 Pumpkins: Fruit or Vegetable? Pumpkins are actually fruits, as they have seeds. Although they look like vegetables, they start out like flowers.
4. 🎈 "It", adapted from the book by Stephen King, is the highest-grossing horror film of all time.
5. 🎃 World Record for Jack-o'-Lanterns: Keene, New Hampshire, holds the world record for the most carved pumpkins lit, with 30,581 at the 2013 Pumpkin Fest.
6. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 A city in Canada bans teenagers over the age of 16 from trick-or-treating.
7. 💰 Today, Halloween is the second largest commercial holiday in the United States, with spending of around $9 billion in 2019.
8. 🐺 Werewolves really did exist: they were men or women suffering from hypertrichosis. This is a hormonal disorder, often congenital, which manifests itself, in men and women, as invasive pilositis over part of the body or the whole body.
9. 🕷️ Finding a spider on Halloween is good luck.
10. ✝️ In Alabama, wearing a nun or priest costume for Halloween is illegal. You may be charged a $500 fine as well as a year in prison.
11. 🎃 Mathias Willemjins of Belgium holds the current record for growing the heaviest pumpkin in the world at roughly 1,190.49 kilograms. And Stephen Clarke of the United States earned the title for the fastest pumpkin carving at a little over 16 seconds.
12. 🧛🏻 Count Dracula was not the vampire’s original name: originally, the famous vampire was named Count Wampyr in Bram Stoker’s novel. Dracula’s name is based on a legendary figure in Romanian history.
13. 🧄 The Irish and Scots originally carved turnips to remember their dead souls. Once they immigrated to the United States, they found that pumpkins were far easier to carve.

(By the way, Triskaidekaphobia is a persistent, irrational and unjustified fear of the number 13. We hope we didn't scare you too much!)