A History of Marin’s Halloween Shenanigans
By Carol Acquaviva
For the most part, Halloween passes as a holiday of harmless fun. But there have been notable pranks, thefts, vandalism, and other crimes that historically have caused Marin residents great concern.
Stealing gates and other loose property from homes was a tradition rooted in the folk-belief that evil spirits would have taken such items. This lawless Halloween custom found its way to Marin.
In 1894, “some hoodlums” in Sausalito took down gates at several homes and deposited them elsewhere, leaving the owners to search for and retrieve them the next day. The same happened in San Rafael, with the blame going to “the festive hoodlums.”
In 1903, an unidentified resident of Sausalito hired an armed watchman to guard his property throughout the night. The expense to do so was less than the $8 the man had paid for repairs the year previous, after his gate and fence were badly damaged. The town reported that there had been considerably less loss to residences overall in 1902.
For reasons unreported, things kicked up in 1907. In Mill Valley, gates were removed from their hinges and left behind, while signs in front of local businesses were switched around “telling brazen untruths about some other merchant in the next block.” Late in the night, an old wagon behind Louis Gesch’s barbershop was moved, blocking the front entrance to his business, with wheels placed hanging from the shop’s awning. Boxes and trunks were stacked inside the abandoned wagon, and as a pièce de résistance, “numerous signs of marvelous construction and peculiar wording also appeared on Mr. Gesch’s windows.”
Under the headline “Halloween Abuse” the Sausalito News in 1907 described Halloween as traditionally “night one of riot and vandalism.”
Throughout this county…the spirit of deviltry and in many instances vile deviltry prevailed which caused the injured to gnash their teeth and wish they could lay hands on the rioters.
Locals inventoried the wreckage in the morning, which included an overflowing saltwater pump, more missing gates and signs, and a prank delivered by “two jackles [sic] slightly under the influence of liquor.”
…[A]n automobile came along and ran over a dummy in the street. Mistaking the dummy for a comrade [the onlooker] gave chase up Princess Street after the automobile, vowing vengeance upon the chauffeur. They lost sight of the smoke wagon and wandered aimlessly for an hour until a resident put them on their course. In the meantime someone picked the dummy up and fastening it to the flag halyards, hoisted it to the top of the flag pole in the plaza. It presented a rather grewsome [sic] sight to the commuters next morning.
San Rafael citizens suggested a greater police presence due to “Hallowe’en toughs.” But opposition pointed out that the misdemeanors were not isolated to just October 31st, or to the boys of the lower class. “Many of the darling boys from ‘high up’ families need spankings,” they said, calling out those residing in the West End in particular. The next year, in advance of Halloween, the city authorized special police to keep an eye on the boys. Not only did the policing efforts fail, the gates to the home of the town marshal, having been left unmonitored that evening, promptly disappeared.
In 1910, the gate-stealing trend continued, and all-caps notices appeared in the Marin Journal as late as three months later, pleading for the return of Mrs. Goerl’s gates.
Ferdinand Holtum’s new three-story building on Throckmorton Avenue was defaced by black ink, and it’s not known if the perpetrator was ever caught. Tamalpais High School suffered damage to the gateway arch in the form of black paint in 1919. The following year on November 1, the athletic field was found strewn with gates and other personal property, including wagons belonging to the Dowd stables, and three wagons from Homestead. Residents spent the day traveling to and from the school to retrieve their belongings.
By 1922, automobiles were abundant, and the annual mischief turned to smashing headlights and windshields, in addition to windows in homes, churches, and store buildings. In San Anselmo, the young vandals smashing gates and destroying property were described as anarchists, and citizens considered arming themselves with shotguns if the Town didn’t supply adequate police reinforcements.
In Mill Valley, fences were destroyed, and plant vases were rolled into the creek. The town appointed several marshals to deal with the problem, and advance warning was given:
No mercy will be shown toward anyone committing malicious mischief, acts of vandalism or destruction of property. Boys, take warning, unless you like the feeling in the cooler! — Mill Valley Record, October 31, 1925
The precautions did not seem to work, as the following year citizens pleaded for better vigilance and guarding against ruthless misbehavior. However, the pattern continued, and special deputies were dispatched to patrol Sausalito, Mill Valley, San Rafael and other locations on Halloween night.
In 1933 the Mill Valley Reporter stated that “nine lads who were pitching apples with excessive vim at passing objects on downtown streets were permitted to ‘cool off’ in the city bastile for two hours…. Aside from this episode, Halloween rites were observed in harmless style.” The Tamalpais News, the high school’s newspaper, documented the boys’ names, describing them as “big shots” who were throwing eggs. By 1937 the community members were so blunt as to call the perpetrators “juvenile terrorists.”
Gate-stealing continued in the 1940s and 1950s, but collectively it was seen as more of a harmless prank, perhaps due to the comparative destruction by way of paint and broken windows. In both Mill Valley in 1943 and Point Reyes in 1947, “hoodlums” opened all of the water hydrants, flooding the streets.
Mabel Ketchum Eastman of Sausalito spoke out in 1937. “There is something all wrong,” she said, “in the way we turn our towns over to children and hoodlums to wreck every Hallowe’en. It is spineless of us, stupid and absurd and certainly unjust to the citizen and taxpayer and most unjust to our youth to encourage in them so little respect for the rights of others or for property — public and private. Harmless pranks are one thing, vandalism another.” Eastman proposed that “every child or minor caught upon the streets AFTER EIGHT P.M. should be taken into custody.” Although curfews had been suggested for Halloween night many times, localities never seemed to carry through on the idea.
