According to the book Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain by Ronald Hutton and other sources, playing pranks at Halloween dates from at least the 18th Century in the Scottish Highlands and Ireland. An early example of the association of pranks with Halloween can be see in the poem "Halloween" by Scottish poet John Mayne, who wrote in the poem, "what fearful pranks ensue!"
When Scottish individuals migrated to the British Colonies and later the United States in the 18th and 19th Centuries, they brought the celebration of Halloween with them, including the custom of pulling pranks. Pulling pranks on Halloween is attested as early as 1862. An article in the November 1 1862 issue of The Inquirer of Lancaster, Pennsylvania mentions boys showering "corn, gravel, and other such harmless missiles" against people's windows. While the pranks described in The Inquirer were harmless, often times Halloween pranks could possibly be dangerous. According to the article "Halloween Was Once So Dangerous That Some Cities Considered Banning It" on History.Com, on October 31 1979 an engineer for the Louisville Short Line had to pull the brake on his train as it went through Newport, Kentucky due to what appeared to be a body lying on the tracks. It turned out to simply be a stuffed dummy placed there by 200 boys who were hiding along the tracks.
While that particular prank could have proven dangerous to the passengers on the Louisville Short Line, other times pulling pranks could be dangerous to the pranksters themselves. The November 1 1893 issue of The Public Ledger of Maysville, Kentucky mentions an incident in which nightwatchman John Brewer at Ohio State University shot and seriously wounded one of a group of students who were in engaged in pulling pranks. A squad of police had to be sent to the scene.
Fortunately, most Halloween pranks did not end in damage to property or people. According to the article "When Halloween Was All Tricks and No Treats" from October 27 2017 on Smithsonian Magazine's website, in 1894 two hundred boys in Washington, DC attacked people on streetcars with bangs of flour. Of course, the use of flour in Halloween pranks will be familiar to anyone who has read the novel Meet Me in St. Louis by Sally Benson or seen the 1944 movie based on the book. In Meet Me in Halloween, children throw flour on individuals, those individuals then being said to have been "killed." Along with throwing flour on people, soaping windows was also a popular Halloween prank in the 20th Century. The November 1 1910 issue of the St. Joseph News-Press reported that not much vandalism occurred that Halloween, but two police officers patrolling Eighth and Fifth Streets noticed that every shop window for three blocks had been soaped.
Among the many other pranks popular in the early 20th Century were ringing doorbells and then running away, removing street signs and placing them in other places, and turning over trash cans. Some Halloween pranks could involve some rather large, unexpected objects. My father grew up in the late Twenties and early Thirties and told me of some of the Halloween pranks pulled at the time. One time the boys took the local schoolmaster's wagon and managed to get it atop the schoolhouse. A popular prank in my father's crowd was also moving outhouses.
The now popular custom of trick or treating appears to have grown out of the custom of pulling pranks. The first known use of the phrase "trick or treat" in print occurred in the November 4 1927 issue of the Herald (published in Lethbridge, Alberta) in an article on how youngsters in Blackie,Alberta were at back and front doors demanding, "trick or treat." One can only guess that at some point some rather intelligent children in Canada realized they could use the threat of pranks or "tricks" as a means of getting candy or other treats. The custom apparently spread from Alberta to the United States by 1934, when it is mentioned in at least three different newspapers: the Oregon Journal, the Helena Independent, and the Chicago Tribune. Trick or treating would spread westward in the United States until it had reached the east coast in the late Thirties.
While some newspapers of the Thirties had a tendency to approach trick or treating negatively, sometimes even describing it as a form of extortion, other newspapers treated the custom in a positive fashion. The reason was simply that with the arrival of the custom of trick or treating, the sort of vandalism seen on previous Halloween nights declined. The November 1 1938 issue of The Reno Evening Gazette noted in an article on trick or treating that the Halloween of that year was "... one of the quietest Halloweens on record."
Trick or treating would not be the only reason for the decline in Halloween pranks. As the 20th Century progressed, particularly following World War II, Halloween parties held indoors became popular, giving youngsters something other to do than ring doorbells or soap windows. Both trick or treating and indoor Halloween parties may have seemed much more appealing to some youths than simply pulling pranks.
Of course, pulling pranks on Halloween has never completely gone away. As a kid I remember the day after Halloween seeing soap covered store windows and even the occasional house and trees covered in toilet paper. Pranks are still being pulled to this day. Indeed, since the Nineties many pranks have been played online. Halloween pranks may not be a as popular as they once were, but they will continue to be a part of Halloween for years to come.
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