A tale of mistaken identities, cultural erasure, and how Halloween became a misunderstood mirror, but those myths and misunderstandings had far deeper cultural roots, which we'll explore on this page.   

During the 1980s and 90s, America saw a wave of moral panic as Halloween was wrongly branded “Satan’s birthday” by evangelical (a more extreme branch of Protestant Christianity that focuses on the Bible as totally true and on telling others about Jesus) figures. 

New York Times reporter Judy Klemesrud's published a fear-mongering op-ed (or opinion editorial, not news, but opinion) sharing her opinion without respect to any evidence or established facts titled Those Treats May Be Tricks in the New York Times on October 28, 1970👈 which was widely shared and recirculated across America, and got all the homemakers and housewives gossiping about the new threat to their children.     

In it, she quoted Dr. Hollis S. Ingraham, New York State Health Commissioner's annual report repeating his unconfirmed reports that:

“Children should not eat any of their collected goodies until they have been care fully examined by an adult. In recent years, pins, razor blades, slivers of glass and poison have appeared in the treats gathered by Children across New York State.”

and she repeated his claims about two unconfirmed incidents (meaning no reporter had checked them out to ensure the facts checked out) in upstate New York:

“Last year in Oneida, N. Y., someone gave three children trick‐or‐treat apples with sewing needles in them. And in nearby Ilion, the father of a 5‐year‐old boy found a razor blade in an apple when he peeled it for the child."

Two days later, early media coverage of a five year old's death in Detroit on Halloween implicated heroin-tainted candy. But by mid-November that same year (1970), newspapers reported the child in Detroit had died from finding his uncle's heroin stash.  

On October 31, 1974, another child did die from eating poisoned candy, but there again early media reports linked it to trick-or-treating.  News media did not correct stories when it was learned his father had murdered his own son by placing cyanide in a pixie stick.   

After Klemesrud got America talking to prime the hysteria, these two early false mass media reports of child deaths linked to tainted Halloween candy, it sparked a national sensational news media feeding frenzy that didn't lift a finger to fact check any of the claims and spread the idea that Satanists all over America were using Halloween to poison or harm children.  

And to get in on the show, parents and kids all over America made more false reports. 

And national news outlets didn't help the matter, clamoring to add to the hysteria.  On Novemer 3, 1975, Newsweek Magazine's William O. O'Neil declared (falsely): 

“over the past several years, several children have died and hundreds have narrowly escaped injury from razor blades, sewing needles and shards of glass put into their goodies by adults."

According to Professor Joe Best of the around eighty cases he investigated since 1959, the vast majority of them turned out to be hoaxes committed by the reporting parent or child, and only a handful checked out of Halloween candy malice with ten cases resulting in minor injuries, concluding: 

“more than 75 percent of reported cases involved no injury, and detailed followups in 1972 and 1982 concluded that virtually all the reports were hoaxes concocted by the children or parents."

But news media through sensational coverage had enflamed and stoked the flames of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s, making it appear real.    

State legislatures across America passed legislation with stiff penalties for tampering with Halloween candy, and hospitals and police departments and public relations campaigns across America focused upon kids having their candy x-rayed before eating it, as many Generation Xers, Xennials, and Millenials remember.   

These claims were repeated uncritically without ever being checked out, and the rest, as they say, is history.  

It turns out that when there were detailed follows up on every case in 1972 and 1982 by Professors Best and Horiuchi, virtually all of them were hoaxes by children or parents.   

If journalists had done their jobs, and verified stories before reporting, the Satanic Panic probably wouldn't have even happened, and no lives would have been ruined.

But because mass media news outlets, editors, and publishers didn't, countless lives were ruined. People all over were convicted by juries of their peers swept up in the hysteria on false accusations and false charges and were sent to prison all over England, the United States, and Canada.

This panic was not at all unlike the Salem witch trials or McCarthyism, but this time the flames of fear were fanned by mass media unlike ever before.   

Sources:  

• Snopes: Pins and Needles in Halloween Candy Fact Check

• Best, Joel, and Gerald T. Horiuchi. “The Razor Blade in the Apple: The Social Construction of Urban Legends.” Social Problems 32, no. 5 (1985): 488–99. https://doi.org/10.2307/800777.

• Pool, W. Scott.  “A brief history of poisoned Halloween candy panic."  CNN. October 30, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/30/health/halloween-candy-panic-conversation-wellness. Accessed 12 July 2025.

This Satanic Panic coincided with fear-mongering propaganda like the film Hell’s Bells that said rock music was a tool of the devil and was further inflamed by urban legends about razor blades in candy and poisoned treats. 

Law enforcement departments across America held seminars on Satanic Ritual Abuse for teachers, churches, and concerned families to educate them about the threat of Satanic cults.   Families all over America insisted Dungeons & Dragons lead to devil worship.  Little did we know we'd lived through our own version of the Salem witch trials but this time by mass media, and just like the Salem Witch Trials, lives were completely ruined by it.  The current moral hysteria over transgender people using restrooms is a similar tempest in a teapot, or false QAnon claim that Democrats were sex trafficking children out of a D.C. Pizzaria known as “Pizzagate," is nothing new, really.   

Despite widespread belief, there is no statistical evidence supporting these fears.  While there may be cases of Satanic ritual abuse, nearly all of them claimed later appeared on further scrutiny to be hysteria, false memory, and popular panic.  

The myth of Halloween as a night of ritual evil was born from projection, Mischief Night and Devil's Night (see Halloween Parties for further explanation), not actual history or truth.  And that myth was greatly enhanced by the Hollywood blockbuster pseudo (false) folk horror films Rosemary's Baby and the Exorcist.  Together, they vastly contributed to the plausibility (it seeming to be true or likely) that there were active Satanic cults in every community involved in child sacrifice in Satanic rites for immortality.

Except there is no actual evidence to that end.  Lives were literally ruined in the 1980s and 1990s due to this hysteria, just like McCarthyism and the first red scare in the Palmer Raids.   

The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit's Review of Satanic Ritual Abuse was parallele with two different British investigations and one Canadian one, and all of those investigations had the same conclusion:  this was moral panic and hysteria, not unlike the Salem with trials. 

✅ According to Kenneth V. Lanning, a Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI’s (Federal Bureau of Investigation, national law enforcement tasked with interstate crimes and national level crimes) Behavioral Science Unit who specialized in crimes against children, including sexual exploitation and child abduction, who in 1992 wrote the FBI’s Investigator’s Guide to Allegations of "Ritual" Child Abuse:

• He looked at hundreds of cases across the United States over many years.

• ❌ He found no proof of big, organized Satanic groups hurting kids in secret rituals.

• 🔎 In all the cases he studied deeply, there was no physical evidence of ritual killings or cult activity.

• 🗣️ Many stories came from bad or leading interviews, where people accidentally created false memories.

• ⚖️ Some real Satanic ritual abuse did happen, but it was very rare, isolated, and perpetrated by individuals, not part of an organized Satanic plan, and there was no evidence of Satanic cults engaged in child sex trafficking in every community.

  1. • When ritual elements were present, they were usually idiosyncratic — devised by individual perpetrators rather than part of an organized Satanic theology or nationwide cult.

     • These individual acts should not be taken as evidence of a grand conspiracy or a systematic plan to infiltrate communities.

     • He strongly advised law enforcement not to assume that every case involving ritualistic elements was connected or indicative of a Satanic plot.

📄 Source:
Kenneth V. Lanning, Investigator’s Guide to Allegations of "Ritual" Child Abuse, FBI Behavioral Science Unit, 1992.
👉 Link to full report (PDF):  The 1992 FBI Investigator's Guide to Allegations of  “Ritual Child Abuse" 👈

Elizabeth Loftus's TED Talk, the Fiction of Memory: How Reliable is your Memory👈, discusses some of these false memory accusations and what her research revealed about false memory from leading questions asked by investigators, social workers, and therapists that implanted false memories.

As Christianity spread into Celtic lands, church leaders layered Christian holy days on top of Samhain traditions to get the Celts who practiced the old Druidic folk religion to convert. 

Over time, the old agricultural and ancestor rituals of Samhain turned into church-approved prayers, almsgiving (giving to the poor), and mass (church service).

This process reached its apex (its peak) with the creation of the Allhallowtide Triduum—a three-day Christian observance spanning October 31 to November 2:

• October 31 – All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween): A night vigil before the feast of All Saints, this was when the faithful would go souling—offering prayers for the dead in exchange for cakes or alms of coin, nuts, and fruit (often Apple's). Alms were also gathered to support the poor and clergy for the next day’s feast.

• November 1 – All Saints’ Day (All Hallows): A solemn feast commemorating all Christian saints and martyrs (someone who dies for a religion or cause), especially those lacking a designated feast day. It emphasized the victory of the sanctified dead over death in Christ's promise resurrection for those who are faithful.

• November 2 – All Souls’ Day: Dedicated to prayer for souls in purgatory—those not damned, but not yet in heaven. Church tradition held that offerings and prayers made on this day could hasten (hurry) their ascent (move souls upward to heaven faster after being purified).

This structure started in 998 CE (say it “C-E"; it means “Common Era") when Abbot Odilo of Cluny (say it “Cloon-ee"; a big monastery leader in France of the most important monastery in Europe) made November 2 a special day to remember all souls who had died. It quickly spread across Benedictine monasteries (say it “Ben-uh-dik-teen"; these are religious communities that follow Saint Benedict's rules) and the wider Church. 

This mixed with older customs like 'guising (wearing costumes to disguise oneself to-, blend in with-, or scare away- supernatural creatures, beings, and departed spirits) and ancestor veneration (honoring family members who died), especially in places like the British Isles where Celtic folk religion (old nature-based religion) survived best. It survived the most in Ireland, where many Celts fled after the Romans wiped out (killed off) the Druids (Celtic religious leaders) in England (see Trick-or-Treating👈 and Crom's Persecution & Survival👈 for more details on how this happened).

When the Roman Catholic Church moved All Saints’ Day from May 1 (which was called Beltane, say it “BYAL-tin-eh" like meh, a spring festival) to the fall, they did this to make it easier to feed the many pilgrims (traveling religious visitors) who came to Rome and to cover old Celtic traditions. They also wanted to layer their festival called Allhallowtide (the season of honoring saints and souls) over older Celtic traditions to help convert the last pagans (people who practiced old folk religions).

Ironically, by doing this, the Church kept the seasonal feelings and emotional power of Samhain (say it “SOW-in"; an old Celtic festival marking the start of winter) but changed the focus to the Christian afterlife (life after death in Heaven or Hell).

As the centuries went on, especially during the Counter-Reformation (a time when the Catholic Church fought back against Protestant changes) and witch trials, even harmless folk practices like herbalism (using plants for healing) and even the standard Christian symbols like the pentacle (a five-pointed star) and pentagram (an inverted five-pointed start) were called proof of devil worship.  And they were standard symbols of Christianity understood and used by all Christians, not just mystical Christians interested in divine astrology, alchemy, or occultknowledge.    

Usage of old shared pagan and Christian symbology was used as proof of devil worship and used to burn people at the stake.  And their presence or appearance was used to support claims of witchcraft.

At first, this was just a cultural change, but it turned into repression (unfair control and punishment). Tools that once taught balance, like the pentacle (a five-pointed star with a circle, representing Christ’s five wounds and the five Christian virtues of knights), and its upside-down form (pentagram) as a symbol of God's love in giving his son in Jesus's Nativity Story, had been Christian symbols for a long time.   So old standard Christian symbols were now called evil.

(see Crom's Persecution and Survival👈, Samhain Gods & Queens👈, and Roman Influence👈 to explore these topics further).  

Out of that bias (strong opinion ignoring or twisting facts), they also invented a fake god that never existed due to a mistranslation by monks copying biblical manuscripts and thereby also falsely associated Crom with child-eating, which reinforced the false accounts of child sacrifice to Crom written by Irish Catholic monks.  

Medieval Christian monks used to think Moloch was a real god who wanted child sacrifices, but this came from a mistranslation of old Hebrew words in the Bible. The Hebrew phrase “to the moloch” actually meant giving children “as a sacrifice by fire,” not to a real god.  

Christian monks didn’t understand this and thought Moloch was an actual god, even though they knew the Hebrew word for fire, and knew the scripture meant child sacrifice by fire, so in this way they mistakeningly concocted or invented a god that never really existed. Later, Moloch got mixed up with other gods like Kronos (a Greek god who ate his kids) and Crom (an Irish god, see Crom's Persecution and Survival👈 for further explanation) in the same way that Belenos (a Celtic sun god) or Bel for short got wrongly connected to Baal, a Middle Eastern god. Thus, Bel and Baal and Moloch were conflated as Satan, and the Celts associated with devil worship.  

Over time, people said these gods were like the devil, so they wrongly accused the Celts of devil worship.  Catholic churchmen then falsely insisted (as many Protestants AND Catholics do to this very day) said Baal and Moloch were the same as the devil, so Celts were wrongly accused of worshiping the devil due to worshipping Crom.  And their false accounts of child ritual sacrifice at Killycluggin seemed to match their bias, it stuck, and it's been with us ever since.

The inverted or reversed five-pointed star (pentagram) also stood for the Star of Bethlehem (the star that led people to baby Jesus), the Immaculate Conception (Mary being free of original sin, the sinful nature all humans have because we are children of Adam and Eve), and the Virgin Birth (Jesus being born from Mary without a human father).  It was a symbol for the divinity of Christ, part of the Holy Trinity made up of by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit or Ghost. 

After the Medieval Period (Middle Ages), during the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation into the Modern Period, people started to wrongly think both the upright pentacle and the downward pentagram were signs of Satan (the devil). Christianization (turning something Christian) had turned into demonization (making something seem evil) of what before was indisputably recognized as holy symbols.  

We'll explore how that happened here in a moment (read on to learn more).  

During the Early Middle Ages to High Middle Ages, church monks repeated a mis-transliteration of old Hebrew words from the first translation of Hebrew to Greek.  But at issue were three key scriptures in the Hebrew Tanakh (say it: tah-NAHK, or Old Testament) of which we are more familiar but because of their error, ended up inventing a god that never existed in any culture.  And that error was repeated in the Latin translation from the Septuagint Greek translation because the Latin translation did not translate directly from the Hebrew, but from the Greek translation.   

These errors began in the first major translation of the Hebrew Tanakh into Greek from Hebrew in Alexandria, Egypt, in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) Old Testament in the 200s (3rd Century BCE/BC) and 100s (2nd Century BCE/BC).  That error was then copied in St. Jerome's translation of the Hebrew Tankah from ~382-405 CE/AD (in the fourth and fifth centuries in the Common Era, or Anno Domini, in the year of our lord in Latin [not After Death as is commonly mistaught]) when he translated the Greek Septuagint Tanakh into Latin in the Latin Vulgate (instead of directly from the Hebrew, repeating the Septuagint translation's error), and as the Vulgate became the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church, this false understanding spread with the Latin Vulgate Bible.   

But to understand how this error was introduced and then repeated in all subsequent bibles, one must first understand understand the Hebrew term Tanakh (say it: tah-NAHK) as being equivalent to the “Old Testament" of the Holy Bible, terminology with which Christianity is more familiar.  Tanakh is an acronym made from three Hebrew words: 

• T = Torah (תּוֹרָה, say it: TOH-rah) → The Law or Teachings (also called the Five Books of Moses, also the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; it contains the 613 commandments Jews must keep once they become adults in the faith at their Bar or Bat Mitvah)

• N = Nevi'im (נְבִיאִים, say it: neh-vee-EEM) → The Prophets (books like Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.); 

• K = Ketuvim (כְּתוּבִים, say it: keh-too-VEEM) → The Writings (books like Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ruth, Esther, etc.)

Once one understands Tanakh means Old Testament, to understand how Catholic monk scholars in the first century BCE/BC translating the Bible made errors, one needs to understand the concept of transliteration.   

Transliteration means writing the letters or sounds of a word from one language in the letters of another language without translating its meaning.

👉 Example:

• Hebrew name מֹשֶׁה (“Moshe")

• Instead of translating it as “Drawn Out," or “Loquacious," or “Carries on," what “Moshe" actually means, we write it in English letters as Moshe or Moses.

So, then transliteration, means to put the word sound from the foreign language into the translated language instead of finding an equivalent word or phrase in the translated language to translate it to with the same meaning, which strips it of its meaning too.  

To translate the word Moshe or Moses, we'd say “Talks too much," or, “Long form," or, “Drawn out," in place of the name.  Instead, in the use of proper nouns, or names, biblical translating scribes and scholars have used the convention to transliterate names into the foreign language to approximate their sound in the foreign language versus translating their meaning to the foreign language.   

This monastic error in contention here involves three key passages from the Old Testament: 

• Leviticus 18:21, 

• Leviticus 20:2-5, and 

• 2 Kings 23:10.   

When the translators came to the Hebrew word mlk, they didn’t translate it as “king" or “burnt offering." Instead, they transliterated it instead of translating it, and thus inadvertently and erroneously inventing a god no human being on earth ever worshipped or made an offering or sacrifice to → Greek Μολόχ → English Moloch.

They wrote it using Greek letters to sound similar to the Hebrew word, but in so doing did not explain what it meant, and the meaning of the term was lost in turning it into a proper name or noun.

1. Leviticus 18:21 says:

וּמִזַּרְעֲךָ לֹא-תִתֵּן, לְהַעֲבִיר לַמֹּלֶךְ; וְלֹא תְחַלֵּל, אֵת שֵׁם אֱלֹהֶיךָ--אֲנִי יְהוָה

  Ancient Hebrew: (read right to left)

Direct (correct) translation, not transliteration, into English: 

“And you shall not give any of your offspring to pass through the fire, and you shall not profane the name of your God; I am the LORD."

Greek text: 

“Καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ σπέρματός σου οὐ δώσεις εἰς λατρείαν τοῖς Μολόχ, καὶ οὐ βεβηλώσεις τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Θεοῦ σου· ἐγώ εἰμι Κύριος."

Transliterated Greek text:

“Kai apo tou spermatos sou ou doseis eis latreian tois Moloch, kai ou bebelōseis to onoma tou Theou sou; egō eimi Kyrios.

Incorrect translation into English from Greek transliteration of mlk: 

“Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD."

2. Leviticus 20:2-5 says: 

וְאֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל תֹּאמַר, אִישׁ אִישׁ מִבְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וּמִן-הַגֵּר הַגָּר בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל, אֲשֶׁר-יִתֵּן מִזַּרְעוֹ לַמֹּלֶךְ--מוֹת יוּמָת; עַם הָאָרֶץ, יִרְגְּמוּ בוֹ אָבֶן.

וַאֲנִי אֶתֵּן אֶת-פָּנַי בָּאִישׁ הַהוּא, וְהִכְרַתִּי אֹתוֹ מִקֶּרֶב עַמּוֹ: כִּי מִזַּרְעוֹ נָתַן לַמֹּלֶךְ, לְמַעַן טַמֵּא אֶת-מִקְדָּשִׁי, וְלְחַלֵּל אֶת-שֵׁם קָדְשִׁי.
  Ancient Hebrew: (read right to left)

Direct (correct) translation, not transliteration, into English: 

“Say to the Israelites: Any Israelite or any foreigner residing in Israel who gives any of his offspring as an offering to the king (or as a molk sacrifice) must be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him.  I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given his offspring as an offering to the king, thus defiling my sanctuary and profaning my holy name. And if the people of the land should overlook that man when he gives his offspring as an offering to the king, and fail to put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his family and will cut him off, together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves by going after the king (or the molk ritual), from among their people."

Greek text: 

“Καὶ πρὸς τοὺς υἱοὺς Ισραηλ ἐρεῖς· Ἄνθρωπος ἄνθρωπος ἀπὸ τῶν υἱῶν Ισραηλ ἢ ἀπὸ τῶν προσήλυτων τῶν προσκειμένων ἐν Ισραηλ, ὃς ἂν δῷ ἀπὸ τοῦ σπέρματος αὐτοῦ τοῖς Μολόχ, θανάτῳ θανατούσθω· λαὸς τῆς γῆς καταλιθοβολήσει αὐτόν. Καὶ ἐγὼ δώσω τὸ πρόσωπόν μου ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐκεῖνον, καὶ ἐξολοθρεύσω αὐτὸν ἐκ μέσου τοῦ λαοῦ αὐτοῦ· διότι ἀπὸ τοῦ σπέρματος αὐτοῦ ἔδωκεν τοῖς Μολόχ, ἵνα μιανῇ τὸ ἁγίασμά μου καὶ βεβηλώσῃ τὸ ὄνομα τῶν ἁγίων μου. Καὶ ἐὰν παραβλέψῃ παραβλέψῃ ὁ λαὸς τῆς γῆς τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκείνου, ὅταν δῷ ἀπὸ τοῦ σπέρματος αὐτοῦ τοῖς Μολόχ, τοῦ μὴ θανατῶσαι αὐτόν, καὶ ἐγὼ δώσω τὸ πρόσωπόν μου ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐκεῖνον καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν συγγένειαν αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐξολοθρεύσω αὐτὸν καὶ πάντας τοὺς πορνεύοντας μετ' αὐτοῦ ἀκολουθοῦντας τοῖς Μολόχ, ἐκ μέσου τοῦ λαοῦ αὐτῶν."

Transliterated Greek text: 

“Kai pros tous huious Israēl ereis: Anthrōpos anthrōpos apo tōn huiōn Israēl, ē apo tōn prosēlutōn tōn proskeimenōn en Israēl, hos an dō apo tou spermatos autou tois Moloch, thanatousthō; laos tēs gēs katalithobolēsei auton. Kai egō dōsō to prosōpon mou epi ton anthrōpon ekeinon, kai exolothreusō auton ek mesou tou laou autou; dioti apo tou spermatos autou edōken tois Moloch, hina mianē to hagiasma mou kai bebelōsē to onoma tōn hagiōn mou. Kai ean parablepsē parablepsē ho laos tēs gēs tous ophthalmous autōn apo tou anthrōpou ekeinou, hotan dō apo tou spermatos autou tois Moloch, tou mē thanatōsai auton,"

Incorrect translation into English from Greek transliteration of mlk: 

“Say to the Israelites: ‘Any Israelite or any foreigner residing in Israel who sacrifices any of his children to Molek is to be put to death. The members of the community are to stone him.

I myself will set my face against him and will cut him off from his people; for by sacrificing his children to Molek, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name.

If the members of the community close their eyes when that man sacrifices one of his children to Molek and if they fail to put him to death, I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off from their people together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molek.'"

3. 2 Kings 23:10 says: 

וְטִמֵּא אֶת-הַתֹּפֶת אֲשֶׁר בְּגֵי בֶן-הִנֹּם, לְבִלְתִּי לְהַעֲבִיר אִישׁ אֶת-בְּנוֹ וְאֶת-בִּתּוֹ בָּאֵשׁ, לַמֹּלֶךְ.

  Ancient Hebrew: (read right to left)

Direct (correct) translation, not transliteration, into English: 

“He defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so that no one might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire as an offering to the king (or as a molk-type sacrifice)."

Greek text: 

“Καὶ μιανεν τὸ Τοφέθ, ὃ ἐν τῇ κοιλάδι υἱοῦ Εννόμ, ἵνα μὴ διεξάγωσιν τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῶν ἢ τὴν θυγατέρα αὐτῶν διὰ πυρὸς τῷ Μολόχ."

Transliterated Greek text: 

“Kai mianen to Topheth, ho en tē koiladi huiou Ennom, hina mē diexagōsin ton huion autōn ē tēn thugatera autōn dia puros tō Moloch."

Incorrect translation into English from Greek transliteration of mlk: 

“He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice their son or daughter in the fire to Molek."

This word actually is an ancient Hebrew words that means offering to the king or molk style sacrifice (burnt) offering.  But as Greek scribes who knew Hebrew translated them into the Greek Septuagint (LXX) Old Testament in the 200s and 100s BCE/BC (3rd and 2nd centuries Before the Common Era/Before Christ), it didn't make sense to them to say “offering to the king" (because elsewhere offerings are only made to God or gods in the text), or “burnt sacrifice to the offering to the king" elsewhere so they took artistic license and inferred here Moloch (Molek alternate spelling) must not refer to king or kind of burnt sacrifice by fire, but must instead refer to some god's proper name with whom they were unfamiliar — and with good reason as nobody on earth ever worshipped a god called Moloch/Molek.   So, they made a false assumption, and it stuck. 

Their error would be reproduced in the Latin Vulgate Old Testament, the official bible of the Roman Catholic Church, and spread by it, along with a false understanding of heinous practices performed by ancient Israelites to a made up god called Moloch. 

And for centuries scholarly Christians ran around telling each other that pagans did child sacrifice to a pagan God who demanded child sacrifice on the basis of this falsehood, just like the ancient Israelites, and so both originally worshipped the devil.  Primitive people apparently to these Christians sacrificed children to Moloch became their theological view, except it was a false one.     

Note: In written ancient Hebrew, there are no vowels and so often our pronunciations are the result of biblical scholars inserting English vowel sounds to mimic the spoken words which is how we got the Christian and English Jehovah from the Hebrew YWHW transliterated in English as Yahweh, a familiar name of God to Christians, where the four letter name of God known as the tetragrammaton is the ineffable name of God or unspoken name of God meaning ‘I am,' and to this day Jews typically refer to god as Adonai as a result.    

Thus, to correctly translate these scriptures they'd read quite differently (see the first translation above after the direct Hebrew, an actual translation vs transliteration), and were basically telling the ancient Jews not to sacrifice their children by fire to the king, or making offerings to a king, but only to make offerings to God, and not of children.   

But the false Christian belief that some ancient Jews believed in- and sacrificed to- a God called Moloch would then explain how the ancient Goidelic Irish Druidic Celts who worshipped Crom (and who according to a 10th-11th century monastic smear, similarly demanded child sacrifice) became the basis for equating the worship of Crom with devil worship because their frame of reference was the Vulgate Old Testament vs direct translation of a single word that invented a God who never existed.  

Irish Catholic monks then mixed Moloch with other figures. Kronos (a Greek god who ate his children), Baal (a Middle Eastern god, son of El), and even Crom got falsely grouped together — as increasingly Catholic monks associated all deities other than the Jude0-Christian God as Satan.  

Baal (say it “BAH-al”) was originally the son of El, the main god in the old Canaanite religion after it for a time won over the father El's cult before it was destroyed by the ancient Israelites. Baal was not the devil, but medieval monks claimed he was on the basis of the Levites in Exodus worshipping the golden calf while Moses receives the law or Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. Moses orders the Levites murdered for idol worship.  Baal's symbology was that of a steer.  The Levites worshipped a golden calf before Moses had them murdered.   Thus, clearly, the monks thought, here is this Goidelic Irish Celtic Druidic god Crom who is associated with cattle sacrifice, so here the Irish are worshipping Baal.  Therefore, devil worship and Satanism are clearly universal, and here they are worshipping the devil by sacrificing cattle to him.  

What can we say?  Barely literate Catholic monks in the Middle Ages played fast and loose in the license they took when copying manuscripts and translating them, and their errors made bogeymen that vilified people Catholicism conquered for centuries that literally murdered millions of people on earth over time.   

Later, in the 1000s and 1100s CE/AD, monks wrongly connected Crom (say it “KROM”), an Irish god linked to harvest and cattle, to both Baal and Moloch.  Irish Celts would be so lucky to be the recipient of two monastic anti-pagan bias errors, plus another distinct annalistic (historical record) one that insisted their ancestors were child-sacrificing devil worshippers with twice the biblical basis for their persecution, justified by a fake history account written by monks in order to Christianize them!   

The false historical accounts appeared in the Metrical Dindshenchas (say it: MEH-tri-kul DIN-shen-khas), or place name poetry written in the 11th (1000s CE/AD) and 12th (1100s CE/AD) centuries, and in the later Rennes Dindshenchas (say it: REN-ness DIN-shen-khas) in prose (narrative vs poetic text) in the 12th Century CE (1100s CE/AD).   They repeated the idea of human sacrifice to Crom referring to the Plain of Prostration or Slaughter and King Tigernmas being slaughered with 3/4 of his army slaughtered by Crom who was displeased with their sacrifice. 

And, in turn, those false accounts of human sacrifice at Killycluggin were then picked up in the Lebor Gabála Érenn (say it: LEH-vur GAW-buh-lah AIR-en), or The Book of Invasions written at about the same time of the Rennes Dindshenschas in the 11th and 12th Centuries CE/AD (1000s and 1100s CE/AD), the synthetic pseudo-history created by monks to Christianize the Druidic Celts by tying their origins to the Jews and Christians and the Holy Bible.   Clearly, there were three old written records claiming Celts sacrificed human beings ot Crom, so it must be true!   Modern scholars conclude it's not evidence of a real cultural practice or a real history, but rather evidence of anti-Druidic anti-Celtic bias of monastic culture in Ireland in the 300s CE/AD-900s CE/AD.   In fact, The Vita Tripartita Sancti Patricii (“The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick," author unknown), written in the 9th Century CE/AD (800s CE/AD) which records Patrick's cult destroying the Crom cult icon at Killycluggin mythically, is written in the same time period and its tone clearly exhibits the bias of the monastic culture against the Druids and Celts.   

Thus the Christian monks said that Crom demanded child sacrifice, but the Irish Celts never said that about themselves, so therefore Crom is just another name for Moloch, another name of Lucifer or Satan or old Beelzebub. But there is no proof this ever happened — and the archaeology proves it didn't happen at Killycluggin.  The only account that exists to the contrary are the false stories written by monks.  

But since anti-Druid monks writing in the 1000s or 1100s CE/AD claiming to be reproducing perfectly older texts now lost to history claimed the ancient Irish Celts sacrificed children to Crom at Killycluggin, it must be true, they reasoned!   There is no evidence, whatsoever, of any human sacrifice at Killycluggin archaeologically, so it seems pretty clear that this was a Christian Catholic slander, or libel more properly as it did appear in print, meant to smear the Druids, prohibit their folk beliefs, and end animal sacrifice to Crom at Killycluggin.  

They also confused Belenos (say it: “BEL-uh-nos" or “BEL-en-os,"Bel for short, a continental Gallic Celtic fire and healing god) with Baal because the names sounded similar and shared beginning and ending letters with a little bit a different vowel sound. Bel was a positive god for the Celts in Gaul, not evil.  And he wasn't worshipped by the Irish Goidelic Celts at all.   But anti-Druid Catholic monks conflated the *Gallic* Bel and *Canaanite* Baal were the same simply because they were close in spelling and sound in pseudo-etymologically (false word origins/roots), and because, like Moloch, all other gods than the biblical one are just different names for “the devil."

These mistakes led to the false idea that Celts worshipped Satan as Bel (meaning Baal) and Crom being equated to Moloch, a child-eating god that never existed and nobody ever worshipped. 

In short, Irish Catholic monks reasoned because:

1. Crom was associated with cattle, and so was Baal,

2. Gaulic (continental, not Irish Goidelic)/Gallic Celts worshipped Bel/Belenos, which sound like Baal, also associated with cattle

Therefore, Baal = Bel = Crom.  Except Baal ≠ Bel, and never did.  And Bel ≠ Crom, and never did.  They took a Canaanite god about whom the Goidelic Irish Celts would have never had any knowledge, nor the Gallic continental Gaulish Celts either, and said they worshipped the same god.  This is proof by assertion and it's a logical fallacy.   And it was false then, just as it is now.  

1. 10th-11th Century placename poetry and prose written by Catholic monks and the later Book of Invasions of false history written by them to convert the Druidic pagans claimed the Irish Celts sacrificed human beings and children to Crom at Killycluggin (dubious at best)

2. Monks didn't know that the scriptures involved here were a result of a transliteration error from the Septuagint Greek into the Vulgate Latin Old Testament that invented a biblical god that never existed

On the basis of child sacrifice similarity, they equated their own earlier smear against Druidic Celts as proof that Celts worshipped Moloch, a god that never existed, the child-eating God.

The misunderstanding and smears stuck, and people repeated them for centuries, even though archaeology shows no proof of human sacrifice at Celtic sites like Killycluggin.  There are two bog bodies that show evidence of human sacrifice among the Celts, and only one of them is old enough to date to this period in all of Ireland.  However, there is evidence of widespread animal sacrifice among the Celts in ritual deposits, excavation spoil, and charred spoil in archaeology, and NO evidence of human sacrifice.

Thus, it turns out that the Irish Celts didn't do human sacrifice or sacrifice children, and never sacrificed to Satan, Moloch, or Baal on Samhain or Halloween, but that Christian slander or libel has been with us since the Middle Ages against the Celts, and that old prejudice was resurrected in the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s.  

The pentacle (upright five-pointed star in a circle) once taught knights about Christ’s five wounds and the Christian virtues of chivalry. The upside-down pentagram symbolized things like the Virgin Birth and Christ’s divine nature. Both were originally Christian symbols.

But during witch hunts, inquisitions, and the Counter-Reformation, these symbols got labeled as evil. Shared pagan and Christian symbols were twisted into “evidence" of witchcraft, and many people were burned at the stake.

Christianization (making something Christian) turned into demonization (calling it evil). Symbols meant to teach balance and virtue became feared, and a goat was falsely inserted. This confusion and fear are still with us today.  We'll tell that story under Hollywood's Horror, Spiritualism, and Symbolic Confusion below.   

Through misunderstandings and deliberate bias, medieval monks invented false gods and fake stories to turn folk traditions into “evidence" of evil. They wrongly turned peaceful rituals and Christian symbols into proof of Satanism. This twisted history still affects how we see Halloween and its symbols today.

Sites like Tara, Tlachtga (say it “TLAKH-guh” or “CLACK-ta”), and Oweynagat (say it “OH-en-na-got”) are special cultural memory places where Halloween survived and changed. 

But the true ritual heart is at Magh Slécht (say it “MAH SHLEKHT”) in County Cavan. There, the Killycluggin Stone — an idol to Crom Cruach (say it “KRUM CROO-akh”) — stood at the center of pre-Christian Samhain (say it “SOW-in”) worship.

According to the Annals of the Four Masters (an old Irish pseudo-history book with some real history), St. Patrick knocked down this idol during his mission to Christianize Ireland. Pieces of the broken La Tène-style (say it “LAH TEN”; ancient Celtic art style) stone still exist and are kept at Cavan County Museum.

Unlike other places, Killycluggin has archaeological (say it “AR-kee-oh-LOJ-ih-kal,” the scientific study of things past people left behind like tools or graves or ruins or dwellings or trash piles), annalistic (say it “AN-uh-LISS-tik,” historical records), and mythic evidence of Samhain rituals with burnt cattle offerings and votive (say it “VOH-tiv”; gifts to gods) gifts. It was likely a big meeting place where people honored Crom for good harvests and healthy animals. Villages gathered to butcher cattle, light a giant bonfire, and share fire. At home, people would sweep from back to front, leave food and drink for dead relatives, open windows, put out hearth fires, and later relight them from the communal bonfire. These acts, once sacred, got wrongly labeled as “devil worship” by Christians (see Trick-or-Treating👈 and Crom's Persecution & Survival👈 to explore these topics in more depth).

There is no evidence of human sacrifice.  The Romans falsely claimed Celts practiced human sacrifice to smear them and justify conquest (see Roman Influence👈  to explore in more detail). Later, Christian writers repeated these lies.

Éliphas Lévi’s 19th-century book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, Doctines and Rituals of High Magick in English (1854–1856), wrongly connected the Goat of Mendes with Satan. The goat image was originally meant to show duality (say it “doo-AL-uh-tee”; balance of opposites). In Mendes, Egyptians actually worshipped a ram, not a goat.  But Lévi’s translation error in misunderstanding Banebdjedet, a ram, as a goat, would have deep consequences once in the hands of Christians.   

Lévi’s illustration showed Hermetic ideas and included many symbolic details and had these intended meanings, which were badly lost on the Catholic and Protestant Christians alike:

• Reconciliation of opposites: Male and female (the androgynous figure with a male body and female breasts), good and evil, spiritual and material, light and dark — all meant to show that opposites need each other and are part of God’s design.

• The gesture: One hand points up, the other down — a reference to “solve et coagula” (dissolve and recombine), an alchemical motto, and also to the Hermetic saying “as above, so below,” meaning that the universe (macrocosm) and the individual (microcosm) mirror each other.

• The caduceus (snakes on the abdomen): Represents balance of forces and spiritual energy (similar to kundalini).

• Torch between the horns: Symbolizes illumination and divine knowledge.

These symbols together showed unity and balance and were meant to lead people to understand God’s singular nature and design. But Christian readers misunderstood, and his illustration got twisted into “Baphomet,” wrongly seen as Satan. 

This misunderstanding laid the groundwork for later fears, as Christians already had old biases connecting goats with evil — an idea they took from Leviticus and Jesus’ parable of separating sheep (good) from goats (bad), which is explained in more depth shortly.

The pentacle (upright star in a circle) once taught knights about Christ’s wounds and virtues, as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 

Before Lévi, the upright pentagram stood for Christ’s perfection and sacrifice. The upside-down version stood for the Virgin Birth and Christ’s divinity. 

But after Lévi, both symbols got wrongly labeled as Satanic, and would appear in popular culture ever after as symbols for Satanism.

Later, occultists (people practicing hidden spiritual arts) took up the pentacle as the geometrically perfect symbol representing the five neoplatonic elements (earth-air-fire-water-ether/space/spirit) of alchemists, occultists, and practioners of magick (spell work, including Christians who believed God left clues on how to influence the real world through prayer and ritual). 

Its adoption by Jewish and Christian mystics, alchemists (who sought to turn common substances into gold and uncover the philosopher's stone granting immortality), and  occultists or those interested in the lost or hidden mystery religions of ancient Greece and Rome, influenced its meaning.  However, as a result, the Church would associate it with Satanism. Medieval Christians accepted astrology and saw stars as God’s signs, which is why horoscopes exist today. 

In Victorian times, Christians attended séances (say it “SAY-on-ses”) on Saturday and church on Sunday. These mixed practices made the symbol seem sinister. Witch hunts and inquisitions outlawed such things to crush church enemies.

Many Medieval Christians also thought astrology was fine, which is why we still see horoscopes and zodiac signs today.  They believe God gave signs in the movements of the planets and stars that could help them understand God's will and predict the future.   

Church authorities outlawed these practices between the 1400s and 1600s, partly because of the Protestant Reformation (when many people left the Catholic Church and challenged its power), and as a way to go after political and religious enemies on the basis of their use.  Accusing someone of witchcraft or magic was an easy way to attack enemies of the Pope. Many people were put on trial and burned at the stake during the three inquisitions.

Because of this, the pentacle and pentagram started to mean witchcraft or devil worship, no matter if it was pointing up or down. But originally, the pentagram was a Christian symbol, and only its inverted (upside-down) form meant Satanic ideas, but that didn't even happen until the 1800s and Levi.

Early Christians first used the ichthys (fish symbol), which meant “fishers of men,” and a simple T-shaped cross. Later, they used the Chi-Rho (a symbol made of Greek letters) under Emperor Constantine. Medieval Christians also used the pentagram or pentacle.  But as these symbols became forbidden and their users burned at the stake, Christianity needed a new symbol.  At last, the intersecting cross (the lowercase “t” shape) became the main symbol, especially as other symbols got connected to magic and were seen as forbidden.

Halloween is a night of masks, but behind the mask is memory—of ancestors, of joy, of sorrow. By remembering the forgotten stories—of the Killycluggin Stone, of Spiritualism’s comfort, of how Halloween and the Celtic Druidic religion were misconstrued as Satanism by monastic slander, how silly fortune-telling games paid homage to ancestors and kept youth out of trouble, and mass media-induced Satanic Panic, and of the symbols and meaning we lost—we can reclaim Halloween not just as entertainment, but as sacred.   Our most Hallowed Halloween tradition began as Christian charity for the poor and became twisted into Mischief Night, then conflated with Devil's Night, and became the devil's holiday thanks to Hollywood and mass media devolving from candy demands and pranks (see Trick-or-Treating👈 and Halloween Parties👈 to explore those topics in more detail).  It's time we put the meaning back into and restore the correct meaning to Halloween by celebrating it the way it was meant to be (minus the animal sacrifices to Crom to bless next year's crop and animal harvest, of course).   

We wish to help restore a night every year where Americans of every background can be themselves or reimagine themselves as they wish without judgment from others and share ancient joy in its parades, lanterns, bonfires, costumes, pumpkin carving, and collective imagination. Let’s rebuild Halloween’s soul together and put the meaning back into Halloween together.  

At Hallowfolk, we aim to restore creativity and community each Halloween. When you join us, you become Hallowfolk too.

Together, let’s make America smarter, kinder, less afraid — and bring back Halloween’s fun, soul, and charity.