Today, Halloween with its haunted houses, fright fests and trick-or-treating are commonplace in America, but these ghoulishly fun fall antics weren’t always the norm. A century ago, this holiday was very different.
When this photo of a Halloween party was taken in 1919 at the Alhambra home of Elizabeth Reynolds on Huntington Drive, the All Hallows Eve holiday was more about the masquerade than getting the ba-jeebers scared out of you. The young adults in this photo were probably attending a Halloween costume party. The evening’s games may have included bobbing for apples, biting donuts off of a hanging string, and carving a jack o’ lantern or two. They may have even played a new Halloween game called The Shivers, which was introduced that same year in the New York Tribune. The Shivers was a game where different “wooly, slimey, cold or wobbly” items were passed around in total darkness among the party-goers. Anyone dropping one of the articles was out of the game. The menu at this Halloween party may have included Sandwich Imps (sandwiches cut in the shapes of demons, cats or owls), and a Jack O’ Lantern salad (hollowed out apples cut to look like jack o’ lanterns and filled with fruit salad).
It may sound strange, but tricks-or-treats or a visit to a haunted house would not have been part of the night’s festivities. Trick-or-treating didn’t begin in earnest until the 1930s in the United States. Haunted house attractions as we know them today began in the 1960s and 70s in the Midwestern cities of Louisville and Cincinnati. Despite the differences of a century ago, we’re sure of one thing. The word of Halloween night in Alhambra was, and always will be “Boo!”
What’s your favorite Alhambra Halloween memory? Share it with us in the comments section below.
Photo courtesy of Tom Geer.
The Prose of Preservation 
I grew up in Alhambra on N. Marguerita Ave. in the 1950’s, between Alhambra Rd. and Huntington Dr. Halloween was always so much fun on our street, it’s still a favorite holiday. One year when I was about 8 yrs old Mr. Fisher of Fisher’s Market on the corner, had pumpkins for a penny a pound. I think I had 50 pumpkins in the yard that Halloween night! For weeks before Halloween I collected as many soda bottles as I could find turned them in to Mr. Fisher for the deposit money and used the money to buy pumpkins. It was fun to plan but by the time I got done carving all of them I was’t so sure it was such a great idea. Fond memory though.