Haunting history and horrifying hippos?

It's Halloween time.

Today we're celebrating the spookiest day of the year.

I'm Bethany Van Delft. It's Thursday, October 28th, and this is the 10 News.

10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5, 4, 3.2. 1.

Depending on where you live, this year's Halloween may feel mostly back to normal, but how did taking a bag door-to-door to ask our neighbors for candy become normal in the first place?

Correspondent Ryan Nourse takes us back to the origins of this spooktacular holiday.

When you think of Halloween, you probably think of costumes, candy, and decorations.

And you're not wrong.

But there's a rich history behind why we get dressed up.

In fact, Halloween is one of the world's oldest holidays.

So if you'll travel with me now to way back when, many moons ago,

in times of your, you'll find that Halloween had much weirder, darker, and spookier beginnings.

Okay, it's the year 1200 BC, the Iron Age. We're in the land of the Celts, a tribe that ruled

parts of Ireland and the United Kingdom. The Celts separated the year into two parts, light and dark.

Every year, as summer turned toward the darkness of winter, the Celts celebrated a three-day

pagan festival called Sa'in. The Celts thought that, during Saw Win, the gods actually became visible to humans. Ghosts of the dead and spirits of

the underworld would spring to life and walk among us. So the Celts wore disguises, like animal skins

and animal heads, in hopes that the gods might mistake them for spirits. Hiding behind these

costumes, the villagers played pranks on each other,

and, of course, blamed it on the spirits. These animal skin disguises were the original Halloween costumes,

and those mischievous Celtic pranks are what put the trick in trick-or-treat. Many centuries later,

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