From the Crypt: The History of Halloween - America's Most Morbid Holiday

30 Morbid Minutes

Society & Culture, True Crime, History

4.8 • 731 Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Spooky enthusiasts rejoice, it's the most wonderful time of year: Halloween season! No better time than now to dive into the history behind America's most morbid holiday; how it started, where certain traditions like trick-or-treating come from, and how Halloween has evolved and popularized into more than just a commercial candy and costume fest. (This is a re-release of an episode originally released on October 4, 2022.) Leave us a review -- it helps the show! :) Follow Us ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠30MorbidMinutes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Elyse Willems⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessica Vasami⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Music by ⁠Casey Edwards Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Halloween. North America's spookiest holiday is more than just a commercial costume fest. We dive
0:07.3	into the origins today on 30 Morbid Minutes. This is the podcast where we explore topics of
0:18.3	a morbid, macab, downright grisly nature, sometimes spooky like today.
0:23.5	I'm Elise Willems.
0:24.6	And I'm Jessica Vasami.
0:26.0	There's this old, old Irish folk tale about a man named Stingy Jack, which already kind of a red flag.
0:32.8	Jack had a bit of a bad reputation, known for being a miserable, conniving sort of man, playing tricks on
0:38.8	his fellow pub patrons.
0:40.8	Sounds like the devil, the devil himself, Satan, heard of Jack's exploits and decided to
0:47.1	meet Jack for himself.
0:48.7	Mm-hmm.
0:49.3	Greatness begets greatness, I guess.
0:52.1	One night drunk and wandering through the countryside, Jack came upon
0:55.9	a body in the middle of a path, which upon inspection, he realized was the devil. Fering the worst
1:03.4	that his end might be near, Jack stalled the inevitable by inviting Satan for a drink at the local
1:10.0	pub. And surprise, surprise, a guy with the moniker, Stingy Jack, didn't have any money on his person to actually pay for these drinks that he invited Satan to go have.
1:19.6	So he asked Satan to spring for the tab.
1:23.6	More specifically, he suggested to the devil that he deceived the bartender by turning himself into a silver dollar, which Jack would pay the barkeep with.
1:33.5	Once the exchange was done, Satan could simply morph back into the Prince of Darkness.
1:38.9	Which all in theory works, right?
1:41.2	Like you pay him with the coin.
1:42.8	That's actually Satan.
	...

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