What Do You Call The Night Before Hallowe'en?

If you said "October 30," you're not alone. But in some places, the night before Hallowe'en has other names.

• In Detroit and other places in Michigan, it's Devil's Night.
• In New Jersey's it's called Mischief Night...or Goosey Night, or even Cabbage Night.
• In Cincinnati it's also Mischief Night.
  
• In Washington state, some call it Devil's Eye.
• In some places, it's called Gate Night, a name that goes back decades.

The custom of trick or treating began in the 1930s precisely to stop what happens on October 30: once harmless pranks that turned destructive. In the 19th century, it was common for teens and even adults to hold costume parties on Hallowe'en. They'd play games like bobbing for apples (as is done in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown) and fortune-telling games, although most of the latter was carried out by young women hoping to find out the names of their future husband. (There were many ways of doing so, including peeling an apple, dropping hot lead into water, walking backward downstairs with a mirror in your hand, eating onions covered in salt, and more.) Later on, as depicted in the film Meet Me in St. Louis, children wandered around in costume pulling harmless pranks: dressing in old clothes, tossing flour in people's faces, tipping over outhouses (occupied as well as unoccupied), tying people's front and back gates up (hence Gate Night), soaping windows and tossing eggs at front doors. Gradually, the pranks became so destructive—fires were set, property was damaged, people were hurt—that it was outlawed altogether, and trick or treating substituted (with the relatively harmless pranks the last to vanish, the "trick" in trick or treat).

It wasn't long before the pranksters set up the night before Hallowe'en to play their tricks. Again, they started small and harmless, then became destructive, especially in cities where population was dwindling like Detroit, where so many fires were set in abandoned buildings one October 30 that the police and fire department couldn't keep up. Citizen patrols formed groups to stop the carnage, calling their force "Angels Night."