Halloween Pranks with Chelsey Weber-Smith

Choose wisely: trick or treat? Starting in the late 1800s, the spooky and goofy version of Halloween we know today became a time of ruckus and sometimes dangerous pranks by kids and teenagers that caused widespread property damage and bodily harm. For this episode, Halloween correspondent Chelsey Weber-Smith joins Sarah to take a look at old newspaper articles detailing these pranks, and the reactions they elicited until the adults of the mid-20th century finally took control back from the youth, trying their best to soften the annual Purge-esque mayhem. Digressions include how to eat a cactus (and why), the killer clown panic, and the horror of midnight margaritas. More Chelsey Weber-Smith: Listen to American Hysteria Follow on Instagram Original music in this episode brought to you by Magpie Cinema Club Produced + edited by Miranda Zickler More You're Wrong About: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bonus Episodes on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy cute merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YWA on Instagram⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sarah Marshall?

  Swamp, Scooter, Ghost and Cemetery, the four genders.

• 0:17Sarah Marshall?

  Welcome to You're Wrong About Halloween yet again with Chelsea Weber-Smith.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  That was a little Santa.

• 0:32Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  A little bowl of jelly you got there. Yeah, yeah, that's okay. No, you have to, you have to go more skeletal.

• 0:41Sarah Marshall?

  Ooh, I have gifts for all the children.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  I mean, Santa is scarier than any Halloween character, I would say.

• 0:51Sarah Marshall?

  Santa does for sure come right into your house. Yeah.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  He sure breaks right in and is watching you all the time. It's not for me. He's not for me.

• 1:02Sarah Marshall?

  You know, I'm pro Santa, but that is another story. And Chelsea, you've come, you're a Halloween guy. You've come on to do many Halloween episodes with us. We've done You're Wrong About Halloween as a whole, which I would really suggest is a companion episode for this one because you tell us, well, we'll get into it, but about how the Halloween we know today is very unlike what it has been historically, and not just because kids go trick or treating in the daytime now. And today we are going to be talking, and I'm going to be telling you with the help of our best friend, newspapers.com, about Halloween pranks.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  I'm so excited.

• 1:42Sarah Marshall?

  So to start, I have a question, which is how do you feel about pranks? Because I suspect that as with loud noises and hitchhiking and so many other things, you and I are going to have diverging feelings about this one.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes, I'm sure we will.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Okay, so pranks. Um, well, I have a big soft spot for pranks because my dear granny, who is English, she loved to prank.

• 2:11Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  She loved to like, when my mom was a kid, my mom was scared of spiders. So she would like chase my mom around with a spider, which maybe isn't a prank.

• 2:19Sarah Marshall?

  It depends on how the kid feels about it, I guess.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know, I just, I do, I have like a loving feeling toward pranks. Miranda, both of our producer, both of our producers.

• 2:33Sarah Marshall?

  Our wife.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Our wife.

• 2:34Sarah Marshall?

  Were wives. Yeah.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  She has, has kind of created this rule that I like, which is like, pranks are okay as long as they don't last for more than, I think it's, it's either five or 10 seconds. And after that, you need to like, end the prank.

• 2:49Sarah Marshall?

  That's a good one.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  So, you know, I have a prankster's heart for sure, but I also really don't like making people feel sad or bad. So that stops a lot of my pranks.

• 3:00Sarah Marshall?

  That's a very important line.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah, I'm interested to see kind of where, because at pranks, it's a wide category. Tell us how you feel. Tell us how you feel about pranks.

• 3:11Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, I, much like Miranda, I think, feel not anti-prank, but like, I'm against 95% of pranks that I've seen existing in the world. And do you remember, this is like about 10 or 12 years ago now, but there was a time when YouTube was like dominated by like couples pranking each other and prank channels.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hated that.

• 3:34Sarah Marshall?

  You know, and it's not like things are better now. It's because we are constantly finding new ways to get 10-year-olds to spend more time on YouTube.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:43Sarah Marshall?

  Or whatever other platform is king. And right now it's AI slot videos of fruit cheating on each other, which every time I mention this to someone, they're like, I have never seen one of those in my life. And I'm like, well, I get five of them per day. It's always AI fruit cheating on each other. And I'm not the only one who's seeing these. I looked it up and there's a New York Times article about it. So it's, it's at least happening to a person.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  No, I know exactly what you're talking about, Sarah, because I did an episode with Panic World about the AI cat videos where the cats are doing all these horrible Elsagate-like things. And I feel like same category of things.

• 4:20Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, we were talking about that for a while. And I really prefer the fruit cheating on each other. It definitely gets weird. I mean, it is weird and it gets weirder. And it can get disturbing, but I do find it to be more like a soap opera than like this. I mean, some of the AI slot videos are like really getting into gore territory. And so I'm glad to have progressed to fruit cheating on each other.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the, the, the old internet is, it's over. We finished it. We completed the internet.

• 4:53Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, we're done.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  We can close the internet and put it back on the shelf.

• 4:57Sarah Marshall?

  We need to burn it down like Gilbert Grape's house.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Just like that.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Oh, what will grow from the ashes?

• 5:09Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, I don't know. Books, maybe.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  A briar.

• 5:13Sarah Marshall?

  Theater, clowns, clowns. But anyway, yeah, so I, back in like the heyday of YouTube prank channels, like none of them were ever remotely funny to me. They were always like, you know, and they would go around as trends, right? So it would be like, make someone think that you destroyed something precious to them, like shave someone against their will, cut someone's hair when they're not looking. And of course, this is like more extreme than like a lot of normal people are doing in their lives, because we're getting into the sort of, you know, anything for views kind of a thing. But yeah, I agree. I think that like the only pranks I like are like fundamentally silly and designed to make the person who is being pranked feel some kind of a positive emotion.

• 5:58Sarah Marshall?

  You know, to feel like, you know, joy or to laugh or to feel whimsy or to be sort of like confused. Or like, I mean, when you think about it, like Amelie is kind of a movie about pranks, right? But it's like.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  It wouldn't be Halloween without bringing up Amelie.

• 6:13Sarah Marshall?

  I guess. Yeah, but they're like, you know, nice French rom-com type pranks where you're reconnecting bitter old people with their regrets and pasts and

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:27Sarah Marshall?

  you know, forgotten dreams. Like, that's a good prank. See, I'm fun. But no, you know, it's like, to me is a great example of a prank. Because I was once in downtown Atlanta and I was leaving a parking structure that I had parked in. And I was like pulling out and stopped, you know, before the gate and the attendant. And I was like, how much do I owe for parking? And she was like, that'll be $88. And I was like, what? And she was like, $88? And I was like, uh, uh. And she's like, no, I'm kidding. It's $8. And I was like.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Oh, love her.

• 7:00Sarah Marshall?

  The feeling of euphoria that I felt in that moment was amazing.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  No, that's beautiful.

• 7:06Sarah Marshall?

  Happy and smiling at each other. And like, it was so, it was like, I can see that really having gone a little pear-shaped for her, depending on the person.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  The risk was high.

• 7:18Sarah Marshall?

  But I think she was doing that a lot and it was good.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I love that risk-taking.

• 7:24Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  I really, I admire her.

• 7:27Sarah Marshall?

  Because it's like time slows down and you have this panic moment where it's like, you feel like you're falling and you're like, oh my God, I can't, I don't have $88 to spend on parking as most human beings don't. And then it was like, ah, ah, ah, like this feeling of just like reprieve and whimsy. And I don't know, it was lovely.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  You know what this is making me think of though, is like how a prank is kind of like a bad dream because you're like having the dream and then you get to wake up from it. And then you're like, oh my God, you're like flooded with all of these amazing feelings of like, it's not true. It's not real. I'm back in like the world as it should be. And it just feels like kind of a similar experience to have a prank pranked on you.

• 8:12Sarah Marshall?

  But then sometimes the alleged prank is just doing something awful to somebody. And I don't think that's a prank. I think people call those pranks sometimes, but that, you know, we could debate whether that counts.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  No, right. I agree with you. Yeah.

• 8:25Sarah Marshall?

  Or, you know, to me, like a really bad one is, and especially, you know, and people do this to children sometimes, is to be like, hey, we're going to do this thing that you're really excited about. Like, hey, Chelsea, we're going to go to Disneyland. You better pack for Disneyland. Oh, we're going to fly to Disneyland. And then like the day of, I'm like, ha, ha. We, we're not going to Disneyland. I pranked you. And it's like, is that a prank? Or is it just a horrible lie designed to inflict pain on someone?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  It's wild. That is such a wild thing. That's like incomprehensible to me.

• 8:57Sarah Marshall?

  Right. The 10-second rules are really good rule of thumb, I think. Or like, you know what I think would be good? Would be like, what if you like? Took a big zucchini and hollowed it out and filled it with, I don't know, anything, baked beans, watermelon, something weird. And then when someone went to cut the zucchini, they'd be like, oh, my God, what is happening in my life? I think that would be fun.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I don't know. I think there are so many.

• 9:26Sarah Marshall?

  I love a zucchini based prank.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that this is definitely your jurisdiction is like crop based pranks.

• 9:33Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, we're gonna get back into corn a little bit, and I think you know how.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm excited.

• 9:39Sarah Marshall?

  Can I tell you a couple of pranks from an Ask Reddit thread?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:44Sarah Marshall?

  This is a few years old, and the question is, what are the best harmless pranks you can pull? There was that one on here a few years ago where the guy kept a hidden bottle of ketchup and would refill the empty bottle just enough to have ketchup for the next day, until his wife thought they had a magic ketchup bottle.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, yeah, I like that one. You know what? Oh, this is reminding me of a really successful prank that I pulled many, many years ago. And it was that I, I went on a freaking field trip to see Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat at this little theater. And we all got, as part of like this dinner show, we got like a chocolate mousse thing that came in like, you know, one of those kind of tall, slim glass things that like parfaits come in. And each one was, had a big dollop on it of whipped cream, like that kind of whipped cream that's like hard, you know, like it came out of the freezer or something. But we also got bread, and the

• 10:44Speaker 01

  bread came with like a whip thing of butter that looked the exact same. So I switched it on my seatmate. And then she took a big, huge bite of butter, thinking it was whipped cream. And I was like, ah, I don't, I think that she didn't love it. So I didn't feel great about it. Because I thought it was, I feel like I would have, if that happened to me, I would have been like, that was so funny and gross and also ultimately fine. But I just feel like she thought I was maybe making fun of her, which I absolutely wasn't. But, you know, but that's the harm, right? It's like, you don't know how someone's gonna feel.

• 11:24Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And then, of course, in social situations, it's like, is it functioning in order to solidify someone as an outsider? Or is it happening in a sort of, you know, it's like, it can go in a lot of directions.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, Nicole.

• 11:36Sarah Marshall?

  I'm sorry to Nicole. But I hope it, you know, it's butter is good. Well, okay, so we're gonna talk about some Halloween pranks. And we're kind of gonna progress forward in time. We're gonna look at kind of the progression of the 20th century and what Halloween pranks look like. And you've talked about this quite a bit in our Halloween episode. Or you're wrong about Halloween episodes specifically. We've talked a lot about Halloween in various places. But this is something I find really fascinating, because I think when you and I grew up, we both just said trick or treat, and had no concept of what a trick would involve if we were to try and do that.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 12:16Sarah Marshall?

  And if we're gonna start our story, kind of, you know, in the early 20th century, would you mind telling us, because kind of generally, what Halloween is like, you know, about 100 years ago?

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure. I'll do my best here. So back in the kind of Victorian era, Halloween looked a lot like kind of bands of boys. And we learned on our recent newspapers.com dives over on American Hysteria, girls did it too, which we didn't know, but we found some evidence in the papers. Go listen to that. It's fun. But the idea would be that these kind of roving bands of, of boys would go around and ask for treats, essentially, or kind of just perform pranks in general. I can't quite remember exactly when the trick or treating happened. But the pranks would be things like throwing a bunch of corn kernels

• 13:11Speaker 01

  at windows and stealing gates. And like, one of my favorites was people would like, light turnips on fire and stick the burning part through somebody's like, keyhole. And then it would stink up the whole house. Classic stuff like pulling lines across the road to trip people. I believe there were like, some kind of Jackassian dummies thrown to like, scare train operators, you know, all kinds of stuff. And a lot of it was pretty extreme as we moved into cities. So like, you know, it was a lot more quaint back in the, the more rural time. But as industrialization moved more and more people into cities, I

• 13:53Speaker 01

  think we can all imagine why things continued to kind of ramp up.

• 13:57Sarah Marshall?

  More people, more mischief, more potential for mayhem.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so they, you know, there was a lot more like, houses were burning down. And they were like, burning down buildings and breaking windows. And it was a little less whimsical and a little more kind of just pure destruction for the sake of destruction.

• 14:16Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Let's start by looking at some of the kind of newspaper accounts of that era. But I'm really interested in this question of like, why was this something that was so popular, you know, and why, and why perhaps did it feel necessary? But yeah, let's look at some of these.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:34Sarah Marshall?

  And you and I also have, so you've done two newspaper.com episodes for American Hysteria. Listen wherever you get fine podcasts. And where we have searched various Halloween search terms, you gave me terms, including Halloween mask and candy corn. And I gave you four of my own as well. And so this is, this is more newspapers.com action for you. Let's open this article, which I have subtitled Many Casualties.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:03Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, so this is an article from 1904. And this is kind of a list of Halloween prank related fatalities that happened during this holiday. We have stories from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, and Illinois. And most of these are about people being shot, and in some cases, killed by people who are basically primed to expect Halloween mischief, which, as you've talked about, includes property theft, property damage, you know, messing around with cars, farm stuff, fences, gates, et cetera. And so we have this holiday that's creating even more of a risk than usual in a fairly gun happy country of being

• 15:45Sarah Marshall?

  shot on sight, because people are just tired of Halloween hooliganery.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:52Sarah Marshall?

  Or something.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  And that, yeah, it happened all the time.

• 15:55Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Would you like to read us a little of this?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. But also, do you remember, I think this was during an earlier Phantom Clown, Killer Clown Panic, when they were like, the kids were like, we saw a clown, and he lives in the woods. And the parents just started firing their guns.

• 16:12Sarah Marshall?

  God, yes.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Into the woods. Because they were like, my kid said that there was a clown in the woods.

• 16:18Sarah Marshall?

  If we must take these reports seriously, can we at least wait until the clown is like, at a closer range or something?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  What are the chances you're gonna hit a clown just by firing into the woods?

• 16:30Sarah Marshall?

  Also, clown season doesn't start until November 15. So.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 16:36Sarah Marshall?

  That tags for that clown.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Okay. All right. So this is, this says, throughout country as a result of Halloween pranks, deaths and injuries reported from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, and Illinois. Roy Lindsay, aged 21 years and married, is dying. And seven other young men are nursing shot wounds, which they received last night during a Halloween lark at Smiths Creek near this city.

• 17:06Sarah Marshall?

  It's a port here on Michigan.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. Yes, this is Michigan. The young men, accompanied by several others who were not wounded, had gone to the farm of Joseph Lambert, who, it is claimed, threatened previous to Halloween that any pranks attempted at his expense would be severely punished. The young men had just stepped through his gate, it is alleged, when Lambert and his three hired men fired on them with shot, shotguns from behind a straw stack. Lindsay fell fatally wounded, and the other seven dropped to the ground with shot wounds in various parts of their bodies.

• 17:44Sarah Marshall?

  Can you believe that?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  That's nuts. Using a shotgun is wild.

• 17:49Sarah Marshall?

  And having a firing squad. Right. It does feel like that's, you could shoot into the air, you know?

• 17:56Speaker 01

  And I imagine they're using the kind of like shotgun shots that scatter, I think it's birdshot. And they, you know, it scatters rather than, than shooting forward.

• 18:08Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And it says they're nursing shot wounds, which to me kind of more suggests that, right?

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, like they just caught like, a little piece of birdshot.

• 18:16Sarah Marshall?

  They're wounded by shot, not by a gunshot. Yeah.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  So maybe it does actually make more sense than firing like a pistol or something. But I mean, it doesn't make sense. Let me amend that. But.

• 18:30Sarah Marshall?

  And, you know, we can't entirely blame Halloween for this. But yeah, because it kind of, I think it illustrates what a kind of escalation of aggression this holiday is kind of representing at the time.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:42Sarah Marshall?

  Let's see. This one is really scary. I mean, they're all, these are all extremely scary. But this one ties into something you were just mentioning. I'll read this.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:51Sarah Marshall?

  This says, mistaken for a dummy, Columbus, Ohio, thinking that an object was a Halloween dummy on the tracks, Motorman William Grilly, Motorman William, Motorman? Motorman?

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Motorman.

• 19:07Sarah Marshall?

  Motorman. All right. Stick with that. Motorman William Griley did not stop his car last night and ran over and killed an unknown man who had not been identified today.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 19:20Sarah Marshall?

  He let the car run until the mangled body stopped the wheels.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 19:26Sarah Marshall?

  Maybe it's Motor Man.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Well, I guess I was right about the dummy on the track situation.

• 19:30Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Geez.

• 19:32Sarah Marshall?

  It's also, it's worth, this is kind of a little bit of a niche reference, but have you ever seen The Good Son?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't think The Good Son is that niche, but I have not seen it, unfortunately. I've always wanted to.

• 19:45Sarah Marshall?

  Thanks, Chelsea. Go and horror shame me.

• 19:49Sarah Marshall?

  But, well, so I guess it's like, it feels niche in terms of like comparing cultural norms with like, The Good Son is my one like data point for the 90s. But in The Good Son, which is such a funny, I don't know, it like charms me that such a movie exists because it is an R-rated movie about children, which would kind of suggest that it's for children. But it's not, but it is, but it isn't, you know, but therein lies its charm. It also, it shows why, as someone with a child with behavioral issues, but really probably as anybody, your special thinking place should probably not be the very edge of a cliff. So.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:25Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. But anyway.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  But they're such good places to think.

• 20:29Sarah Marshall?

  You don't have to be standing on the very edge of the cliff to enjoy the cliff. You can enjoy the cliff from a safe distance, I think.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Back in my hitchhiking days, I met this like really weird kid and he was traveling around. And he like, didn't really talk much, but for some reason we were like, yeah, we'll just all like camp together. And we were on this cool cliff in Big Sur and he was sitting on the edge of the cliff. And I remember being so worried about him and he was carrying around the arm of a cactus and eating it because it was psychedelic in some way.

• 21:06Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  So don't do that.

• 21:08Sarah Marshall?

  Don't do that either, you know? Well, definitely not both at the same time and definitely not the cliff thing. You can eat a cactus if you want. But as someone who's attempted it, it will take you all day long. And then when you start to trip a little bit, you will fall asleep. Yeah.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Really?

• 21:23Sarah Marshall?

  When I was like 19.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 21:26Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Cause I had a friend who had like mail ordered one.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Was it this guy?

• 21:33Sarah Marshall?

  It could have been this guy.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Never know. I mean, this was in like, probably like 2000 and like nine.

• 21:39Sarah Marshall?

  It was 2007 that I ate the cactus.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Shit. Couldn't have been him.

• 21:47Sarah Marshall?

  You never know. You never know. But listen, it takes a long time to eat a cactus.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  I just don't even know how one would.

• 21:57Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, it's, well, it's the inside part. You don't eat the, the spines or anything, but even, and you know what else? At least this one did not taste good. But anyway, in The Good Son, Macaulay Culkin, who is the good son, but actually he's the bad son. Twist. He throws a dummy into oncoming traffic and causes accidents. And it's like, the specifically terrifying, horrible, oh my God, only a very scary kid would do this thing. And yet apparently in the early 20th century, people were doing this quite a bit. I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's where he got the idea. Maybe his grandpa told him about it.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Maybe. And then I wonder if Jackass, you know what? I don't know if it was Jackass or if it was CKY, which was the skate videos that Jackass came out of. And they were like more hardcore. And I wonder if, I can't remember if it was Jackass or CKY, but it was that one. And then the one where they pranked people by pretend, it's not funny, by putting a baby in the like backseat of their bicycle. And then like pretending to fall over and the baby would like fly out of the seat. And I feel like, I was always like, boys, this is too far.

• 23:07Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, boys.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  You've gone too far, boys.

• 23:10Sarah Marshall?

  You can staple each other's dicks all you want, but there is a limit. You're going to give someone a heart attack.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  You just can't do, do things like that to other people where people think someone is dead. You can't do that. That's not a funny prank. Not funny. Johnny, Steve-O, don't do it anymore.

• 23:27Sarah Marshall?

  I was watching a movie recently and Timothy Olyphant showed up and I was like, oh my God, it's Johnny Knoxville. But it wasn't.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Johnny Knoxville has a tiny, tiny moment in Coyote Ugly, which I watched recently.

• 23:45Sarah Marshall?

  I still haven't seen Coyote Ugly. We should watch that.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  It's, uh, bad.

• 23:51Sarah Marshall?

  I bet I'll like it.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  I bet a lot of people are going to be like, no, it is not bad. And I tell you from 2026, looking back, if you don't have the nostalgia, I don't know. Just not sure.

• 24:02Sarah Marshall?

  Well, I'm going to say something very controversial here.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:06Sarah Marshall?

  And it's that, well, no, it's, this is actually more just reflecting history. I love how now we're like Practical Magic. We all love Practical Magic. It's such a great classic and everyone loves it. And I always has loved it and et cetera. And therefore the sequel, well, I'm not going to watch it because I don't like slightly different versions of things I already like. And so I, my opinion is kind of moot on the matter, but I've heard it's not great. And the reality is that like Practical Magic is a movie that like, I think many, many women, especially women and gays have always had a deep soft spot for, but that critics did not know what to do with was sort of like, you know,

• 24:50Sarah Marshall?

  I think there's like a class of movie that's like, oh, you know, movies that there would be VHS copies of in the hotel in the ring. You know, to show that they're like somewhat random. And that doesn't mean they're not good. They've got Steel Magnolias at the Ring Motel, for God's sake.

• 25:06Sarah Marshall?

  Which is funny to think about that.

• 25:10Sarah Marshall?

  R.I.P. Dolly. You were the best of all of us. But like Practical Magic has always been a movie that has like, had a hard time finding its niche until I think the sort of TikTok fall aesthetic algorithm really popped off. And now it's like, found the home that it was always looking for. But it's like, not a movie that anyone regarded as a classic until fairly recently. And I think that's kind of a lovely thing. I've always really loved it. And I also love that it's a movie about how sometimes you have to fucking kill a guy twice.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I love that it was filmed near where I lived. And sometimes I go to Coopville and actually, you know what? I actually went before they knocked it down to the Practical Magic House.

• 25:59Sarah Marshall?

  Chelsea.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  It was really cool. Yeah. It was like a little tiny museum you could go into at the time. And it's no longer there sadly. You know, everybody loves that house. The house is the star of the film.

• 26:08Sarah Marshall?

  The house is the star. And then Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are also there.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:13Sarah Marshall?

  It's also, I know that I'm something, I'm really becoming middle aged because when I thought about the concept of midnight margaritas the other day, I was like, you know, that would really throw off my whole week.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I can't imagine.

• 26:28Sarah Marshall?

  I want to be in bed almost asleep by 10:30.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Well, and also that's, this is funny because they just talked about this in What Went Wrong, which is a podcast I love. And they, but it was like, because they just did an episode of this, but they were talking about how like, is it Sandra Bullock? Somebody's awoken from slumber to have midnight margaritas.

• 26:47Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  And that's like, that is even worse.

• 26:51Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 26:53Sarah Marshall?

  It's throwing off her whole sleep cycle.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  I would be like, get away from me. I'm not doing this. I'd have a midnight wine.

• 27:03Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, midnight wine would be good. Or maybe a, maybe a 9:00 PM wine.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  I mean, that would be ideal. Yeah.

• 27:10Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, Chelsea. Here's a fun one. This is an article from the Calgary Herald. And this is the earliest example that I could personally find in my newspapers.com survey, which is certainly not definitive, of the phrase trick or treat appearing in the newspaper. Not trick somewhere and treat somewhere else, but trick or treat together. This is from the Calgary Herald in 1927.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:31Sarah Marshall?

  And this says, Halloween came and went and was observed most circumspectly in town without the usual depredations. The greatest activity was manifested by the very young who wandered in droves from door to door, heavily disguised and demanding trick or treat. To treat was to be untricked. And the youthful holdup men soon returned home, bowed down with treats.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:55Sarah Marshall?

  Crisis averted.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  All right. So what I'm getting from this is a bit, a bit of an expla, like there, there's a tiny tone here of explanation. Like maybe this term is, is a little new. Like, I mean, I'm not sure.

• 28:09Sarah Marshall?

  It sounds like it. Well, and it's in quotes, which always suggests that to me that something is new.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and it looks like three other people have clipped it. So I wonder if that means.

• 28:19Sarah Marshall?

  Other historians have been here before.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which is another part I love about newspapers.com.

• 28:24Sarah Marshall?

  I know. Will you click on the next link up, which is from 1932?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:32Sarah Marshall?

  And I'm going to have you read this for us. This is from the Montana Record Herald. And the headline is Broadwater Schoolchildren Wash All of Soaped Windows in Their Building.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Psychologists and educators have agreed that if there is any bad in school children, that fact is certainly brought home to the school teacher in her everyday duties. Any tendency in this direction, it is said, is bound to spring up at this time of the year, Halloween time.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Mrs. Grace Muth, principal of the Broadwater School, deals daily with the good little children and the bad little children of that district.

• 29:10Sarah Marshall?

  I love that 100 years ago, you could just write "bad little children" in the newspaper.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. They were allowed to be a little bit more descriptive. "The good little children and the bad little children of that district, and viewed with apprehension the approaching time for pranks. Her expectations were fulfilled when she arrived at the schoolhouse yesterday morning to begin her efficient daily service to the Helena public."

• 29:36Sarah Marshall?

  Oh.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  That is nice. "And found every window on the first floor carefully soaped, as high up as could be reached." And that is S-A-O-P-E-D, soaped. Quote, "When will the windows be washed, Mrs. Muth?" The little graders asked, disturbed because of the grotesque shadows cast on the pages of their readers. Quote, "I don't know, children," Mrs. Muth said doubtfully. "The janitor is ill and won't be able to do it today." Nothing further was said, and school continued under the handicap. After the pupils had put away their books and papers for the day,

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Mrs. Muth sat behind her desk, scanning essays, correcting arithmetic papers and spelling notebooks, when she was interrupted by the clatter of wash pails and the chirping of little tots' voices outside her window. Hmm. The Broadwater School children, some from Hawthorne School and some from denominational schools, were formed into an army by a diminutive leader and deployed around the building, attacking the soaped windows with a vengeance, and large sponges, rags, and brushes. Before 6 o'clock last evening, every window that had been the target of chunks of soap

• 31:02Speaker 01

  in pranksters' hands was as clean as the day it rolled out of the glass factory. This goes to show, says Mrs. Muth, that the children of Broadwater-

• 31:12Sarah Marshall?

  You do not like Mrs. Muth.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Mrs. Muth. That the children of Broadwater appreciate their school. People who say, quote, "Kids will be kids around Halloween time," apparently have not looked into the situation at the Broadwater School.

• 31:31Sarah Marshall?

  No author attributed, so I have to assume it was Mrs. Muth.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Interesting.

• 31:38Sarah Marshall?

  Have you encountered soaped windows as a prank in your research?

• 31:42Speaker 01

  It does sound familiar, for sure.

• 31:44Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, because this has come up a lot in the articles I've been looking at.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  I just feel like it's kind of like, thanks?

• 31:51Sarah Marshall?

  Right, yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  You cleaned my window?

• 31:53Sarah Marshall?

  It's certainly a lot better than a lot of the other stuff we've talked about. And like, another prank that I've encountered in these articles and that persisted, you know, and I read one article about this happening in the 80s, is dragging a tree across the road to block traffic, like causing actual, you know, real hazards. And there's at least one example of a fatality happening because of that in an article I found from the late 80s. And this thing of, you know, moving gates, like moving structural elements of people's homes, which is, you know, not dangerous per se, but could become that if someone's trying to fix it. The soaped windows thing is on the annoying side of the spectrum, and it appears that it's just, you know, you just like get a bar of soap and you rub it on somebody's window.

• 32:37Sarah Marshall?

  And I was picturing it kind of like soaping the entire thing, but it seems like just scribbling it around will do the trick.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:46Sarah Marshall?

  And it's more just like something that creates work for you. Although, isn't it getting it a little bit cleaner, possibly?

• 32:53Speaker 01

  You know, and like, as I was reading this, I was kind of laughing at chunks of soap, because in my mind, I was thinking of like foamy soap.

• 33:01Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Like, if you're washing your car and you fill up a bucket and a bunch of soap and it gets all, you know?

• 33:06Sarah Marshall?

  No, you're kind of like putting a film or a patina on the window. And I can see how that would be annoying to clean off.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:12Sarah Marshall?

  Because of the way bar soap works. But this is like a big, like, on the harmless but just annoying end of the spectrum one. And that, and this recurs like throughout the decades. And at some point, kids aren't soaping enough windows anymore. That's my moral panic.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Well, and nobody's, I feel like this is like lower on the ladder of pranks than even like TP-ing a house.

• 33:33Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, because if you are trying to clean TP off a house, then like, and that's kind of the famous one we refer to now within popular memory. And that can involve like going on a roof again. It like could become dangerous. A soaped window, unless it's like really high up and you're really dedicated to cleaning it, is maybe more just an annoying thing.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 33:54Sarah Marshall?

  And then in the kind of reversal that, you know, you've talked about in your history of Halloween, and I'm going to ask you to explain a little bit about this once we look at this article. We then have an article from 1947 from the Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia, where the headline is "Merchants Offer Prizes for Best Soaped Windows."

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 34:13Sarah Marshall?

  And it's very interesting how like the way Halloween kind of transmogrifies, as you've described for us, seems to be in a pretty smart way that I wish we would see more of, at least in terms of the stuff that sticks. Like, adults not exactly trying to stop kids from acting out on Halloween or from kind of, you know, running around the neighborhood, having a sense of freedom and power, but trying to sort of divert that into other channels. And rather than like shutting off the sort of release valve of Halloween, like studying and undermining it.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:48Sarah Marshall?

  Do you want to read this one to us?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  "Merchants Offer Prizes for Best Soaped Windows." And this is out of West Virginia in Logan. "The Halloween cry, 'Tricks or Treats,' will hold no terror for Logan merchants this year. The old prankster's threat has been turned to treats for tricks. Instead of waiting helplessly for the usual Halloween night window sopings, the merchants will encourage it and even offer prizes for the best pictures soaked on their windows. C.B. Kelly, chairman of the Logan Kowanis Halloween Party, said that every merchant had agreed to award a prize to the mischievous urchin who displays the best soap artistry on his store window."

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Eh, boring.

• 35:38Sarah Marshall?

  What do you think? If you were a little hooligan, would you be tempted by this?

• 35:43Speaker 01

  I mean, this is just classic stuff. I feel like, you know, when people want to turn something that kids are doing into something the adults are in control of rather than the kids. So this just wouldn't, this wouldn't do it for me personally.

• 35:59Sarah Marshall?

  Right, because if an adult is telling you to soap a window, it kind of ruins the appeal.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, the whole point is the transgression and you're taking that part out of it. I guess you're adding, I guess you're adding in prizes, which is good.

• 36:13Sarah Marshall?

  That's something.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  I do like prizes, so maybe I would, maybe I would do it for the prize. I'd like to know what the prize was before I soaped, though.

• 36:24Sarah Marshall?

  Yes, that would be good. You don't want to waste your soap skills. And then let's look at a couple others. We have, from 1949, we have an article from the Green Bay Press Gazette. "Halloween Pranks Less Tumultuous Than Some Years." And I'll read this to us. "Halloween Observance in Green Bay Was Less Tumultuous Than In Many Previous Years, A Check With Police Disclosed Today. The fire department had the hardest time with 11 runs, mostly to fires set in leaves or rubbish. There was one false alarm. Luckily, there were no other fires while firemen were on runs caused by Halloween pranksters. There was no serious property damage, and the only personal injury was reported by Mrs. J. Pichowski, 336 North Oakland Avenue." Because as we've discussed,

• 37:07Sarah Marshall?

  we loved to put women's entire addresses in the newspaper for much of the 20th century. She reported, and this is scary to me, she reported that when she answered the door, some teenage youths threw sand in her face.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 37:24Sarah Marshall?

  And while she was temporarily blinded, attempted to tear off the screen door.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Ah, horrible.

• 37:31Sarah Marshall?

  And it says a lot that like, like today, that would, I think, be a pretty big story. But at this point, they're like, well, it's been a lot worse pretty much every other year we can think of. So at least only that one lady got sand thrown in her face.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Grab those freaking kids by the ear.

• 37:48Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  And pull them somewhere else, yeah. Jeez.

• 37:52Sarah Marshall?

  "There were some cases of broken windows and the usual amount of overturned garbage cans and soaped windows. The younger element was out in strength for 'tricks or treats,'" quote unquote, "and for the most part, found the hunting good. One disappointed youngster today found that the carefully wrapped packages he had been given at an Alaway home contained chunks of coal instead of goodies."

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Funny.

• 38:15Sarah Marshall?

  "I haven't got anything," one woman stalled. "We've got something. We've got soap," the youngsters retorted. Another man met the "tricks or treats" challenge with a brief, "tricks." "Now, what do I do?" the youthful caller asked a companion.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Now that is calling a bluff. I like that. It is so funny just to say tricks.

• 38:39Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Do it. Freaking do it.

• 38:41Sarah Marshall?

  And do you remember, to me, there was like a very specific cadence with what I can't remember saying trick or treat when I was a kid.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Trick or treat.

• 38:48Sarah Marshall?

  Yes, exactly. It's like, at some point, we all started kind of singing that.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:53Sarah Marshall?

  It's like all aboard. It's like one of the great song phrases of American life.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  And it's also interesting that it was tricks or treats, and now it is one trick or one treat.

• 39:04Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, that's true.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  What's up with that?

• 39:06Sarah Marshall?

  What's up with that? Inflation, Chelsea.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  What's up with that?

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Inflation, good one.

• 39:12Sarah Marshall?

  So, or shrinkflation, I guess. So what, like, what's happening to Halloween that is making it, you know, turning it from a purge holiday to a trick or treat holiday?

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Hmm, mhm.

• 39:24Sarah Marshall?

  Or to a candy holiday specifically?

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Basically, by like the 1930s-

• 39:32Speaker 01

  We were in the depression. People were like not really into property destruction to like an even greater degree because everyone was really destitute.

• 39:41Sarah Marshall?

  Mm hmm. And during wartime, too, I would imagine, because again, there's a lot of shortages.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that that was also a huge factor. But like in this era, slowly, parents and just generally adults, little politicians here and there.

• 40:00Sarah Marshall?

  Little politicians everywhere.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Little politicians everywhere were trying to figure out a solution to this problem. And that solution eventually came in the form of, similar to the story that we read about the window soaping, they decided that they could make Halloween nicer by kind of controlling it.

• 40:24Sarah Marshall?

  This makes me think of, there's like a flashback episode of The Simpsons where Marge buys a baby on board sign and shows it to Homer. And she's like, now people will stop intentionally ramming our car. It's like that.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. I mean, they did things like, at first, they did these like really stupid things, like a mayor in Chicago tried to replace Halloween with Conservation Day.

• 40:53Sarah Marshall?

  No, that's not gonna work.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  President Truman tried to turn Halloween into Youth Honor Day in 1950.

• 41:00Sarah Marshall?

  Nice try, Truman.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Which is nuts. But, you know, after that, it really became like, let's create things like haunted houses in our homes. And we can like entertain children and keep them busy that night with things that are still fun and Halloween-like without them kind of being loosed on the city or town to do their pranks. So one of the things they did is they started, as I mentioned, to create these little haunted houses in the neighborhoods and kids would go from house to house into the little haunted house that each family was making, like in their basement or whatever. And there were little pamphlets you could get about it, like using, and this is where we kind of get like the spaghetti for intestines. And like, you could get like slabs of liver and say it was liver.

• 41:46Sarah Marshall?

  I guess in that case, it would be true.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  You know, grapes and say their eyeballs. Yeah. And, you know, and jump out from dark corners and put on creepy music and do all of that stuff. And then, you know, from there, we actually start to see people like the J.C.'s, you know, the little like fraternal organizations as well, putting on these haunts. And that is a history of haunted houses that we talk about in our episode called Haunted Attractions from a Million Years Ago.

• 42:15Sarah Marshall?

  On American hysteria.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. So basically, we just get like this parentification of Halloween in a way that was still trying to like honor the spirit enough that kids would buy into this softer Halloween, while they also reaped the benefit of not having their gates stolen and their windows smashed and their, you know, sand thrown in their eyes, which is very dangerous. I do not like that.

• 42:42Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, don't do that. I know. I don't think anyone was thinking about it, but you know, just in case.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  And I mean, the same thing happened with Christmas. You know, Christmas used to be about like shooting guns at the sky and running around and shit, you know?

• 42:54Sarah Marshall?

  I've talked about that on the show with Sarah Archer in the past.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. That's right.

• 42:59Sarah Marshall?

  That episode, too. Right. And this idea, and I remember her talking about Christmas also specifically being kind of like, almost a time for off gassing social unrest, right? And this idea that we had this sort of carnival king for a day thing where, you know, as a member of the working class, you could like go around with a big bowl of alcohol, which is what was sailing was, and be able to sort of experience, as we're talking about with Halloween pranks, I think, a sense of power on sort of the one day of the year when people who have more social power than you on every other day are the ones hiding from you.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:37Sarah Marshall?

  Or who are gonna come and wasail, as the case may be, or who are gonna provide you with food and drink.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of interesting class elements, too, with Halloween, because, you know, it was this thing that people in the working class, like, you know, kids and teenagers from working class families were more likely to go out and like do these pranks and have this kind of freedom, quote unquote, right, that you wouldn't see like little, little Victorian boys and girls in, you know, the middle and middle upper class.

• 44:09Sarah Marshall?

  Although they had better lawyers if things got out of hand.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 44:12Sarah Marshall?

  Probably should have.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  But they would often like look out the window and wish they could go. You know, it was like, there was a huge amount of envy. Oh, like, the people who wanted to like, you know, slum it, as it was called, the kids and teenagers that wanted to go out and like get to do this like dangerous revelry. There's just a lot, a lot of, a lot of envy, for sure.

• 44:34Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  But it's just, you know, it's like, it's very interesting stuff. I don't know. Halloween is a very rich text, for sure.

• 44:42Sarah Marshall?

  It's all fascinating. And kind of the need, the needs that holidays serve for us are so interesting. And I think that maybe the success of Halloween is it was, it was able to remain kind of a social release valve for to find a way to be that in a new way. And that if maybe it's not about being able to cause mayhem or destroy property, I have a story that I found from 1963 of someone just dumping a bunch of oil on a hill so that cars couldn't get up it. Again, very dangerous.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Really dangerous.

• 45:11Sarah Marshall?

  Wild, wacky.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:13Sarah Marshall?

  But rather than causing mayhem, you sort of create an illusion of mayhem. I think maybe that's kind of part of the transformation that happened is that the prank is not just actually destroying something, but like creating the safe illusion that there are ghosts in the house, so that there's bloody handprints on the window, or that there is an animatronic that's gonna pop out when you try and get candy. And that actual mayhem kind of was turned into pretend mayhem. Which I personally like.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 45:46Sarah Marshall?

  But also, you know, the Halloween season is when I sort of throw a horror movie film festival for myself in my living room. And I love having a season for that. And just sort of, even in the loosest way, like having a drawer within the calendar to put in sort of thoughts about death and ghosts and the seasons changing and the winter coming on.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, we need it.

• 46:09Sarah Marshall?

  Does that resonate with you?

• 46:10Speaker 01

  I mean, absolutely. It does. And I think, you know, I feel kind of like, for me, I don't know, I have this idea that my development sort of stopped at 17. And I feel, I true, like, I think we all have an age that we feel like we are within. Mine is 17.

• 46:29Sarah Marshall?

  I think I feel about 15.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  You feel 15?

• 46:32Sarah Marshall?

  I feel a combination of 15 and 35. And that's been for you since I was 15.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. So I think that like my immediate feeling when like someone's like, we're having a window soaping competition. I'm like, fuck you. I am soaping windows of my own accord tonight. Actually, you're getting soaked.

• 46:54Sarah Marshall?

  I am going to stab the top of your convertible with a jackknife. Yeah.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. Look out.

• 47:01Sarah Marshall?

  Which is another thing I read about. This is like some article about Halloween mayhem. They're like, the top of a convertible was slashed when it was parked outside a bowling alley. And it's like, that might have just, that might have not been Halloween related.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  No, no. And, you know, but as like a real, as a, and as a, as an adult in my 30s, I appreciate the softening of what is obviously something very dangerous and very cruel to so many people who have nothing to do, you know, who don't deserve to be pranked in any way. So I, you know, I have a knee jerk annoyance and like defiance. But if I really put my logical hat on and I really enter the correct age that I am, I'm like, yeah, this had to happen. This had to happen. And it needs, you know, I think at this point, maybe we could throw a little bit of the danger back into Halloween.

• 47:55Sarah Marshall?

  We could throw a little bit of mayhem in.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Maybe we've gone a little far?

• 48:00Sarah Marshall?

  Not to be a total Andy Rooney about this, but this thing where like, you know, trick or treating is scheduled not on Halloween, but on whatever Friday or Saturday is near Halloween between 2:00 and 5:00 PM.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:15Sarah Marshall?

  Safety is so important. As a parent, you know, you should make whatever choices you want. But like, I would rather die than take my child trick or treating in broad daylight. They don't deserve that. What have they done?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  I know. What have they done?

• 48:31Sarah Marshall?

  It's very dramatic of me to say, but I have strong feelings about this, you know?

• 48:35Speaker 01

  It's gotta, it's gotta be dusk at minimum.

• 48:38Sarah Marshall?

  It's gotta at least be dusk, magic hour, something.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  And in October, dusk is at like 5:30. So you could still be home for dinner.

• 48:47Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, we're in the Northwest. It does actually happen later in other places. But yeah.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 48:53Sarah Marshall?

  And just whatever we want to do to make things safe, whatever kind of emerging problems we're seeing in different times, you know, I don't know what it's like to be a parent today. But the idea of having to trick or treat in broad daylight makes me sad in a way that I can't accurately describe. Because I did get to trick or treat without a parent, you know, with like a gang of kids just like knocking on doors. I think we were like, you know, within maybe like a few streets of where our parents were. But as a child, you should be empowered to go without an adult and demand candy from unsuspecting citizens. That's the sense of power that I loved having. And I know it's not always feasible, but that should be the world we live in.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  I know. And, you know, it's like,

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm not a parent. I know I would be a terribly anxious parent, but you're right there, you know? Take your kid out of dark. It's fine. I don't know.

• 49:49Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  I'm not telling anyone what to do. I have no idea.

• 49:52Sarah Marshall?

  No, I'm not telling anyone what to do either, but I'm, that's the one thing where I'm like, I, I just, that felt really great to me and I want that to be a feeling that other kids get to have now.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  And I think what I'll say is like, remember how you felt.

• 50:08Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  As a kid and like, make sure that, that, that feeling is available and we can change how it's available, the way that they did in the 30s and 40s.

• 50:20Sarah Marshall?

  It's rarely going to be the exact same things.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  And we, and it gave us haunted houses, which is like one of my top 10 favorite things, period, in the world. And we wouldn't have those haunted houses if we didn't try to figure out a way to curb the dangerous aspects of something. So like, there's a lot of merit to that, but we have to make sure we don't go too far, you know?

• 50:39Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And I like thinking about it that way, that like haunted houses are actually a beautiful, fun example of harm reduction, technically.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Ah, yes. Yes. I love that.

• 50:50Sarah Marshall?

  Harm reduction for all haunted houses for those who want them.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:54Sarah Marshall?

  Well, let me read you one last little prank.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  All right.

• 50:57Sarah Marshall?

  This is from the Scranton Times in 1950. It's a little story on the comics page.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:03Sarah Marshall?

  And it says, "Coatesville, PA, practicing up for Halloween pranks. A group of Coatesville youngsters brought confusion to milk dealers and milk consumers alike. Police said the children made the rounds of West Coatesville last night, doubling the amounts of milk orders householders had written on slips. By the time the milkmen filled the doubled orders, there was no more milk for other parts of the city."

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Well, kids, that's something.

• 51:33Sarah Marshall?

  Don't drink too much milk.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't drink too much milk. It's Halloween. Don't, well, actually, milk is kind of good for Halloween because you're eating so much chocolate.

• 51:42Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, that's true. Yeah, it balances. Chelsea, what's a, what's a Halloween recommendation you have? I'm going to recommend, as I do for every day of the year, sitting quietly in a cemetery. Maybe bring a book, maybe make a little picnic. I just think we could all do with some more cemetery time. I really do.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Oh, cemetery time is key. It's very important. I, I care deeply about cemetery time.

• 52:07Sarah Marshall?

  I still think about when we were in New Orleans a few years ago and they had a sign that was like tours and then the sub, remember this? That was like a neon list of like the four main types of tours, swamp, scooter, ghost, and cemetery. The four genders.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Damn, I was going to say that. I was going to make that same joke and you took it right out of my mouth.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Okay, here's my Halloween recommendation is even if you're scared, support your local haunted house. Like, go out to the weird farm, go out to the haunted corn maze, like, go out to the, you know, your local pumpkin patch farm that's doing it. Sometimes they're in the city. The city ones are usually a little more hardcore, but you know, you get to see, again, Miranda says it's kind of like one of the last vestiges of theater. Like you're in there and like these teenagers, a lot of the time, or like passionate local adults, because it's not like you're getting paid well, you know, they're in there, they're putting on a show. I think it's a beautiful experience and like, just pay attention to

• 53:12Speaker 01

  the sets. People put a lot of love into their, you know, the haunted houses that they create and they're not that expensive and it's just a lot of fun. And I think a good jump scare could do us all a favor and reduce a little of our real anxiety.

• 53:26Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, we could all do with some screaming.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really helps reduce your anxieties that are serious and real by giving you a little jolt.

• 53:36Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Of something like a prank that isn't real and will soon go away. The pressure valve.

• 53:42Sarah Marshall?

  I love it.

• 53:48Sarah Marshall?

  And also, if you want to watch a not too scary, not very long Halloween movie, House at Haunted Hill, it's perfect.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  It's great. That skeleton is scary. Yeah.

• 53:59Sarah Marshall?

  Starring the skeleton as himself.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  I love him.

• 54:03Sarah Marshall?

  Chelsea, happy Halloween. Thank you for being my best ghoul.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Sarah, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for not pranking me. I thought maybe you were going to prank me at some point, but I'm glad you didn't because honestly, it's not the day for it for me.

• 54:18Sarah Marshall?

  But you know what? If you want to prank me, you can. I trust you.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  I trust you too. So next time we'll bring, we'll bring a prank, each bring a prank. And this has been really lovely and thanks to all the Halloween ancestors that came before us and all who will come after.

• 54:36Sarah Marshall?

  Have a great Halloween, everybody. Be safe. Don't throw sand in anybody's face.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Happy Halloween.

• 54:55Sarah Marshall?

  And that is our episode. Thank you to the people who helped make this show. Miranda Zickler is our producer and editor and Nicole Ortiz is our administrative assistant. We'll see you in two weeks.