The Birth of Halloween

Drinking with host Derek Waters, Tess Lynch tells the story she calls the mother of Halloween. In 1912 Hiawatha, Kansas, masked gangs of kids spend Halloween night tipping outhouses, lighting fires and trashing the town, and garden-club founder Elizabeth Krebs (Allison Tolman) wakes on November 1 to find her prized flower beds destroyed. Her first fix, a modest party with apple bobbing in 1913, wears nobody out: the next morning the town is wrecked again and a mail truck is ablaze. Krebs spends a whole year and her own money planning a far bigger celebration, and on Halloween 1914 costumed kids pour into the town square for games, pumpkins and a band that marches them all the way to the opera house. The following morning her garden is untouched, the grateful chief of police reports that vandalism has plummeted and promises to keep the tradition going, while Lynch, spilling her drink along the way, credits Krebs with turning the holiday from destruction into costumes and candy.

The Halloween Frolic that Elizabeth Krebs started in Hiawatha on October 31, 1914 is still held every year, and the town bills its parade as the oldest night-time Halloween parade in America.