"A witches' revel for Hallowe'en."  From Good Housekeeping, 1908.

From Southwestern University's 1949 yearbook.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

Why was John Carpenter's film Halloween set in the suburbs?  To find the answer, we must look far back.  From Suburban Life, 1908.

"Mr. Jack O'Lantern."  From Live Language Lessons, First Book by Howard Driggs, 1920.

From the University of Rhode Island's 1973 yearbook.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

Happy haunting, from Charleston Southern University's Cutlass yearbook of 1980.

A witch table and an owl table.  From The Book of Hallowe'en by Ruth Edna Kelley, 1919.

"A ghost."  From Handicraft for Handy Girls by Albert Neely Hall and Dorothy Perkins, 1916.

From Window Backgrounds by George Cowan, 1912.

"The great stoned pumpkin."  From Washington State's 1969 yearbook.

Due to our mysteriously esoteric studies, we're often asked for oracular predictions about Hallowe'en.  For this year's holiday, we consulted our own Mimetic Oracle, and here's why: Hallowe'en is a grand pageant, and it's been said that theatre reveals what is behind so-called reality.  Our Mimetic Oracle draws from 92 characters in six vintage plays, with 166 spoken lines and 31 stage directions in the mix.  With the system, one randomly draws five characters and generates a script to illuminate the current drama of life.  (There’s a detailed F.A.Q. which explains how the scripts are created, how to make sense of the dialogues, how to determine whether a reading is positive or negative, what to make of the various characters, and why these specific 6 plays were chosen for the system: http://www.mysteryarts.com/play/.)

Here's the scenario that the oracle generated when asked about this year's Hallowe'en:

The first three characters all have names beginning with M, indicating that folks will be well in synch.  The first two lines of the script feature boisterous voices and laughter, both very favorable.  The third line mentions an elephant in the room, but there's no elephant in the cast, so it's either a case of inebriation or a controversial issue that no one will wish to discuss (you'll recall the old idiom about "the elephant in the room").  It's okay -- the controversy will be tactfully avoided, in spite of one person awkwardly bringing it up.  The fourth character is called "Wait" after an archaic British term for a street singer, so expect some singing as well.  The scene ends most intriguingly, with a remarkable vow: "I will live in the past, the present and the future.  The spirits of all three shall strive within me."  The message seems to be that your holiday will have a timeless quality, that it will turn out to be one for the ages, harking back to Hallowe'ens past but somehow also setting the stage for future holidays.  The very final detail, that "all disappear under sheet," is the best of all, recalling as it does the sheet ghosts of Hallowe'en.  Will you finally pass out, taking the events of Hallowe'en into the mysterious realm of the unconsious?  Is there an erotic implication?  In any case, it's a very favorable prediction for your Hallowe'en.