This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

Today, Lisa is going to be unpacking the history of the Halloween haunted house,

which is directly tied into today's practice of trick-or-treating. Lisa is the author of

Trick-or-Treat, A History of Halloween. By the turn of the 20th century, Halloween in America was

nothing more than a day of pranking, kind of like April

Fool's Day. Here's Lisa Morton with the story.

So it was all good fun at first, but then by the 20th century, as America is becoming much

more urbanized and more populated, these pranks move into the cities.

And when they move into the cities, they become much less nice.

Now they are about destroying things, about shattering glass bulbs and windows.

They are about setting fires, tripping pedestrians.

And by the 30s, they are causing millions of dollars of damage.

And this is also during the Great Depression when a lot of these cities don't even have the money to pay for all of the damage that's resulting from this vandalism. And a lot of cities at this

point considered dropping Halloween or trying to ban it.

But fortunately, there were a few places where cooler heads prevailed and said,

you know, maybe we can buy these kids off instead of trying to ban this holiday

because that could backfire on us, which it would have.

And they got together and they actually put out little pamphlets

in many of the cities that would tell homeowners how to do this.

So these little pamphlets would suggest that the homeowners get together.

Again, we're still during the Great Depression.

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