Memories of Goosey Night
A Halloween tradition
By Stuart Smith
Halloween seems like a simple enough affair: in the evening on October 31st, kids go from house to house asking for candy. The standard request at each door is “trick or treat?” Whoever answers the door always gives out a treat, sometimes exchanging banter with the kids or their adult chaperones. My wife likes to try to guess who’s behind each mask.
That’s about it.
Trick or treat? Really?
In recent years I’ve asked the younger trick-or-treaters if they want candy or money.
Almost all of them want candy even though I offer them enough cash to buy ten times the candy I normally give out. But one little girl, a future entrepreneur for sure, bargained me up to $3, which she took and then also asked for candy.
For the last decade or so the number of trick-or-treaters has declined so much that I’ve never given out more than $5 or $6 over the whole evening. I’ve thrown out candy worth several times that much after each Halloween was over.
A colleague of mine, also concerned with kids’ health, handed an apple and a quarter to each kid. I doubt that his house was a popular Halloween destination.
A trick on the candy-givers
My mom once used trick-or-treating to promote her theater group’s production of “Harvey,” a play about an affable man who claims to have an unseen (and presumably imaginary) friend, Harvey, who he describes as a six-foot, three-and-one-half-inch tall rabbit. A Broadway production of the play starring Jimmy Stewart ran for 1775 performances.
I was given a stack of cards that bore the name of the play, when and where it would take place, and a blurb about the mysterious rabbit. The effect was supposed to be as if invisible “Harvey” had visited the homes where I trick-or-treated.
Except, I wasn’t invited into most of the homes, and I was caught by the mother in one home where I was. She grilled me about why I was leaving this card on her table.
In any case, the production had a successful run.
The dark side
In the town in New Jersey where I grew up, the real action took place the night before Halloween. This was called “Goosey Night,” a night of pranks and mild vandalism.
The next morning townspeople would wake up to find houses and cars dripping with raw eggs, trees festooned with miles of toilet paper, and car and store windows full of symbols and words scrawled on with bars of soap.
For some kids with issues, Goosey Night was an occasion to vent their anger and frustration. A classmate of mine who had a difficult family life went around damaging or defacing any vulnerable object he came across. For example, he would write on car windows with candle wax instead of soap.
At the school playground across from my house, he unscrewed the handle and spout assembly from the outdoor water fountain, causing a geyser that must have run for several hours until some civic official was notified and turned the water off.
He also removed the front lawn sundial that had been a gift to the school from an earlier graduating class and disposed of it somewhere. Fortunately, this kind of behavior was rare.
The historian’s view
Unbeknownst to me, Goosey Night is a tradition in the part of New Jersey where I grew up. A 2014 article on NJ.com entitled “Mischief Night? Cabbage Night? Goosey Night? What does it all mean?” sums up what is known about its origins.
I’ve since learned that other areas of the country have some kind of tradition concerning the night before Halloween. Among others, there’s “Mischief Night” and “Cabbage Night.” Local historians are apparently aware of these traditions, but their origins are not widely known by the general populace of the communities in which they occur.
Safe and wholesome Halloween today
The suburban town in Massachusetts where I live now appears to have been untouched by any of these traditions. There’s no mischief night, and Halloween itself seems tame and almost totally under adult control. The hours are fixed by the local government (6 PM to 8 PM in my town) and most of the kids are accompanied by flashlight-carrying adults who remain out on the street while the kids come up to the door. Occasionally, a group of teenagers, usually from outside of the immediate neighborhood, will show up at your door.
Many parents allow their kids to collect unlimited amounts of candy but then strictly regulate its consumption: one piece a day is a typical rule. We had to limit our daughter’s intake because some of the chocolates — we were never sure which ones — made her throw up.
This is all pretty un-exciting stuff, but I can’t say I miss the old days in New Jersey where the traditions still hold.
