“The White Marlin Mall celebrates Halloween by holding a time for Trick or Treaters to stop by their participating stores,” said Mitchell. “But do you know how the tradition of Trick or Treating actually got started?”

“The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated with a ninth-century European custom called ‘souling.’ On Nov. 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for ‘soul cakes,’ made out of square pieces of bread with currants,” said Mitchell. “The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could hasten a soul's passage to heaven.”

“Pumpkins are carved into Jack O'Lanterns for Halloween. We bake them into Pumpkin pie. Tales of terror have used pumpkins to create an eerie atmosphere,” said Mitchell. “How did the pumpkin become associated with Halloween?”

The Jack-o’-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore, according to Mitchell. “As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree,” said Mitchell. “Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.”

“According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.”

The Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns" originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips.