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It's not just trick-or-treating...
It’s October and you know what that means… HALLOWEEN!
Being an escape rooms centre with 5 thoroughly unnerving horror themed rooms
within the walls of our haunted heritage listed building, we’re all about Halloween, obviously. But what’s this spooky tradition really all about? Let us fill you in…
Ancient Origins of Halloween
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland and the UK, celebrated their new year on November 1.
This day marked the end of the summer grain harvest and the beginning of the winter, a time of year they associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before their new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.
In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future.
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.
All Saints’ Day
On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honour of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.
By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honour the dead.
All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
Halloween Goes to America
By now well established in Europe, as the beliefs and customs of different European settlers began to mesh with those of Native Indians in America in the 1700s, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbours would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.
Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivities were common, and by second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants, especially Irish, who helped to popularise the celebration of Halloween even more.
History of Trick-or-Treating
Borrowing from older European traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.
In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mould Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighbourly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes.
Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century.
Halloween on the Big Screen
Halloween movies also have a long history of being box office hits! Classic Halloween movies include the “Halloween” franchise, based on the 1978 original film directed by John Carpenter and starring Donald Pleasance, Nick Castle, Jamie Lee Curtis and Tony Moran. In “Halloween,” a young boy named Michael Myers murders his 17-year-old sister and is committed to jail, only to escape as a teen on Halloween night and seek out his old home, and a new target.
Considered a classic horror film down to its spooky soundtrack, it inspired 11 other films in the franchise and other “slasher films” like “Scream,” “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13.” A direct sequel to the original "Halloween" was released in 2018, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Nick Castle. More family-friendly Halloween movies include “Hocus Pocus,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Beetlejuice” and “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”
Black Cats, Ghouls and Ghosts
Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.
Today’s Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into black cats.
…and today?
Halloween is a holiday celebrated each year on October 31, and Halloween 2021 will occur on Sunday, October 31. Nowadays, Halloween is a day of activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, festive gatherings, donning costumes, gobbling treats… and now, Witching Hour escape room sessions.
In our heritage-listed building in the heart of Northbridge, the site of 12 deaths since its construction in 1897 (as featured by Perth Is Ok!), our Hall of Horrors
escape rooms including The Haunting, Cannibal
and Dracula
are sure to have you hearing things go bump in the night for days and weeks after your escape!
In the true spirit of Halloween though, our venue will be taken over with Halloween spirits – alive (live performers) and not (our resident poltergeists) - eerie fog, jack-o-lanterns and ghoulish decorations to complete the festivities and lure in unsuspecting trick-or-treaters across the entire Halloween weekend.
What are you doing this Halloween? Dare you enter the fully immersive festival of spooks that will be our venue?? Halloween escape room bookings are open now, book yours here!
Adele “Boo”, Beatrice Fanny “Doll” & Emily Mary (Mother) Atkins at 48 Lake Street Perth, now Escape This. Emily Mary was the first of 12 recorded deaths at our venue 👀
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48 Lake Street, Northbridge, Perth WA 6000
The Basement, 712-720 Hay Street Mall, Perth WA 6000
2B The Corso, Manly, Sydney NSW 2095