Vampires, witches, werewolves, and all things spooky. That's what Halloween is all about, right? But where did the myths and legends start? And why do we love a holiday that's scary?
Smithsonian Magazine recently looked into the history of vampire scares. Here's the short version:
At home and abroad, vampire scares usually began when a person died – often of a contagious disease, and in New England almost always of tuberculosis – and others in the vicinity began dying, too, usually of the same sickness. Ignorant of germs, people surmised that the dead person had come back to drain family members’ blood, and the exhumation and staking, burning, beheading and whatever else followed (practices varied with geography) were an effort to insulate the community against further harm. Often the vampire-hunters were not disappointed when they pried open the graves: many natural signs of decay, like bloating and bleeding from various orifices, looked like evidence of midnight feasts.
The really scary part of all this is that more than five hundred people in the United States die of tuberculosis each year, and the incidence of drug-resistant cases is on the rise. Luckily, we don't need to worry about vampires sucking blood, spreading disease, or anything else.
All that candy being handed out to Trick-or-Treaters, that's a different story, though. Americans eat more than twice the recommended amount of sugar each day, and Halloween is even worse.
You're mom probably warned you about the danger of a stomache-ache. The folks at American Chemical Society Reactions took on a different question: how much candy would it take to kill you?
Please, don't sit down and eat three hundred pieces of candy tonight. Whether or not it would kill you, it wouldn't end well.
Try watching a scary movie or visiting a haunted house, instead. Research suggests we've evolved to seek out threatening things in our environment, and a little scare might actually be good for you.