Prairie Ghosts: Scary Halloween Thoughts

Across the Fence #310

If you’ve been following Across the Fence for a while, you’ve heard me tell about the Prairie Ghosts. We were a group of neighbor kids who formed a club, and because we lived on Coon Prairie, we called ourselves the Prairie Ghosts. We never had any super great adventures, but with a little embellishment, I could probably come up with some semi-great adventures.

As we know, the best time for ghosts is around Halloween, so it was also a favorite time for the Prairie Ghosts.

As many of you know, the history of Halloween traces back to the ancient religion of the Celtics in Ireland. They had a big feast at the end of summer called Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween). They believed Samhain was a time when the division between the two worlds became very thin, and hostile supernatural forces were active. It was when the ghosts and spirits of the departed were free to return and wander the earth. Now you know why Halloween was a good time for both departed ghosts and live Prairie Ghosts.

The Celtics also lit bonfires that represented the sun and was used to aid the Druid in his fight with dark powers. The term bonfire comes from the words “bone fire,” meaning the bones of sacrificed animals, and sometimes humans, were piled on wood timbers and set ablaze.

We never lit any fires or sacrificed any animals or humans. We were a little more civilized back in our Prairie Ghost days.

The origins of present day “trick-or-treat” can be traced to Samhain, which was the big night for demonic jubilation. The spirits of the dead rose out of their graves and wandered the countryside, trying to return to the homes where they formerly lived. Frightened people tried to appease the wandering spirits by offering them gifts of fruit and nuts. People also tried to fool the spirits by wearing masks, and dressing up in hideous costumes to blend in with them and fool the “real” ghosts.

In many parts of Britain and Ireland, Halloween was known as “Mischief Night.” That meant that people could go around the villages and countryside playing pranks and getting into any kind of mischief without fear of being punished. In the nineteenth century, the Irish and Scottish immigrants brought this custom to the United States. It developed into what we now call “trick or treat.” If we had only known that bit of information when the Prairie Ghosts roamed the Coon Prairie, we could have blamed those tipped over outhouses and corn shocks on the Scotts and Irish. I’m not saying that us Norske boys ever tipped anything over, but if we had, at least we’d have had someone to blame.

Some of us Prairie Ghosts were known to roam the countryside on Halloween, usually looking for the ghost of Gamle Magretta to make an appearance. We traveled on our trusty Harley’s, our only mode of transportation. Well, I have to be honest; they weren’t exactly Harley’s. They were big, clunky, one-speed, balloon tire bicycles, but we pretended they were Harley’s. We even used baseball cards in the spokes to make a motor sound. We held them in place with a clothes pin. They made quite a racket when you had several bikes flying down the gravel road. We took them out at night when we wanted to sneak up on someone or something. We sure didn’t want Gamla Magretta to know we were around. We’d heard the old stories of how she would kidnap kids and they were never seen again. We didn’t really believe she still returned each Halloween, the night she had been killed, but we weren’t taking any unnecessary chances, just in case.

Almost as chilling as the story about Gamle Magretta, is the thought of all those valuable 1950 baseball cards we destroyed in the spokes of our bikes. That’s a scary thought for Halloween. We may not have sacrificed any bones, but we certainly ended the collectable lives of some valuable baseball cards. Remember, those were the days when the Milwaukee Braves had some real superstars on their team, including a young Hank Aaron, and one of my favorites, left-hander Warren Spahn. I can still name the players at most of the positions during that time: Del Crandall, Joe Adcock, Red Schoendienst, Johnny Logan, Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, Billy Bruton, Andy Pafko, Wes Covington, Warren Spahn, Bob Buhl, and Lew Burdette to name a few. Now that’s really scary. This from an old Prairie Ghost who has trouble remembering his cell phone number.

In those days, we listened to the games on the radio. Very few games were televised back in the 50’s, when TV was in its infancy in our house. We only had one channel and, for you young people, we didn’t have color TV or HDTV. Everything was black and white and sometimes when reception wasn’t good, it was like watching a program in a snowstorm. I can even remember seeing TV for the first time when I was around ten years old. Now that’s a real scary Halloween thought.

It’s not surprising to me that Prairie Ghosts roamed the countryside when I was young. We didn’t need reality TV. We weren’t sitting around watching TV or playing computer games. We were creating our own reality and living it.