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The Core Traditions

INCLUDED with BOTH

The Early Experience & The VIP Experience

The CORE Traditions

Here, we'll share a little more about the core traditions that are part of A Folk Halloween Experience so that you know what you can expect at your experience. Yet, we strive not to give away too much so that you still have a sense of mystery when you attend your experience.

Early Experience & VIP Experience Traditions

(CORE traditions are included with your ticket purchase for both experiences):

A murder mystery is afoot: Up to three killers lurk. Can you identify them before being murdered? A mid-century party fave
Fortune-telling: Discover your luck in the year ahead, or your fate with harmless silly party games (1840s-1970s)
Halloween Party customs, traditions & games: Halloween Party games from 1820-1970s
Victorian Ghost/American witch folk tales by candlelight: A favored pastime at Halloween & Christmas during the Victorian era
Field & farm traditions: Test your future & luck with the fruits of the harvest and hear the tale of Stingy Jack O' the Lantern performed
FREE handcrafted costume workshops: Free at the Casper Rec Center, Natrona County Public Library, and The Science Zone, we help bring out the creator in you (or you can DIY at home, see The Costumes for DIY resources)
Creative Costume Contest: Cash prizes for best, scariest, and most original/creative costumes, see The Contest.
Snap-Apple Night/Nutcrack Night fire, candle, & nut traditions: Celtic and Roman Samhain traditions, their history & do all the Celtic and Roman Halloween things
Find your true love: A perennial and timeless preoccupation of young singles. Don't trust Bumble or Tinder, trust tried and true tradition.
BEER, soda, water, & snacks

Murder Mystery. Included with BOTH Early Experience & VIP Experience Tickets!

Owing largely originally to the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock mysteries), Penny Dreadfuls (Victorian Era predecessors to comic books, dime store horror graphic novels), and dime store mysteries, murder mysteries began to pop up as a feature of Halloween Parties during the heyday of the Halloween Party from the 1840s-1940s. Of course the works of Edgar Allen Poe are writ large in the American imagination in this respect too, as were the writings of other famous colonial and Victorian Era horror writers.

As American horror master extraordinaries Vincent Price and Alfred Hitchcock continued in this tradition, Popular Publications' Classic Comics' Dime Mystery, Horror Stories, and Terror Tales and E.C Comics' 1950-1955Tales from the Crypt, Nancy Drew mystery novels, and Rod Sterling's Twilight Zone, and the horror and mystery writings of Agatha Christie capture the imaginations of generations of American children and readers, murder mysteries became a mainstay of American Halloween Parties by the mid-century of the 20th Century (1900s, 1940s-1960s).

Field and Farm Fertility Traditions. Most of our most ancient customs around Hallow's Eve most certainly derive from the Celtic Samhain and Roman Pomonalia fall harvest and fertility festivals. Those traditions involving bonfires, candles, nuts, and apples all come from these fall harvest and fertility festivals. From the story of Stingy Jack O' the Lantern to the carved turnips that originally represented them to others to predict one's luck in the next year or over one's life, to finding a mate, to determining the suitability of a present romantic interest, most of our traditions were concerned with ensuring bountiful harvest or offspring.

Victorian Hallow's Eve Spiritualism Traditions. Life before and during the Industrial Era was surrounded by death. Life was cheap as childbirth, disease, dangerous work, and war casualties meant death was lurking around every corner. So many of our lost customs and traditions revolved around the idea that Hallow's Eve was the best time to make contact with one's lost loved ones—something very few Americans had qualms over. Very few then would see them as weird, contrary to their faith traditions, or evil.

They were popularized through the Christian social and religious movement of the 1840s-1940s dubbed Spiritualism that began with the Second Great Awakening from the Swedenborgian Restorationist Protestant churches in upstate New York and started with ghost knocking of the infamous Fox sisters. Consequently, most of our forgotten Halloween traditions revolved around the desire to foretell one's future in the next year; how, when, where, or how they might find a mate; or to divine their fates. They became extinct likely due to the exposure of several prominent mediums associated with Spiritualism as frauds and as science education increased in the 20th Century.

Hallowed Eve Party Traditions. The evolution of the European Roman Catholic practice of souling into trick-or-treating meant that by the Industrial Era, gangs of delinquent youths roamed streets on Mischief Night wreaking vandalism, havoc and mayhem, giving adults the impulse to give them entertaining alternatives through Halloween Parties.

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