As a part of northern Appalachia, southwestern Pennsylvania is home to an amazing tradition of folklore and superstitions. Although this part of Appalachian culture has been steadily on the decline in the age of internet and technology, there are still pockets where these traditions hold firm.
Halloween is an exceptionally good time to remember some of these old traditions and superstitions. In the early 20th Century, as Halloween gatherings and harvest festivals wound down for the evening, many younger folks would often gather in small groups and tell ghost stories or enact some various superstitious traditions.
A favorite activity amongst the younger folk of the olden days was to find an abandoned house. Each participant would venture inside one by one, armed with only a scrap of blank paper that they would hide somewhere in the house. They would recite a special phrase, rhyme, or riddle, and then leave. The lore goes that the next day, upon returning to the abandoned house, a ghostly entity would write on the scrap of paper left behind the name of the person the individual would marry.
Children often ventured off to old forgotten graveyards and told exaggerated tales of the persons buried there. The bravest of the lot would walk around a grave backwards thirteen times to make the spirit of the deceased appear so they could ask questions of it. If such a spirit appeared, it could be sent back to rest by several different methods: by reminding it that it was dead, by reciting the Lord’s Prayer, or by saying “Go back to where you came from.”
It was also believed that if a pine tree already over two feet tall was planted, by the time it could cast a shadow over a grave, the one who planted it would die.
Other superstitions were often followed throughout the fall and Halloween seasons. Many existed to give signs as to the nature of the coming winter. It has been said that when the fire in the fireplace would burn blue, a hard blizzard was soon to come. A thunderstorm in October was also looked upon as an omen for a particularly bad winter. Milk that spoiled overnight was seen as an indicator of the land having been bewitched, and horses that sweat in the morning also indicated the presence of witchcraft.
Many of these beliefs and superstitions still exist within the memory of folks living today and serve as an amazing insight to the beliefs and practices of those that came before us. It was a simpler, and often more interesting, time when there was still a lot of mystery left in life and the ways of the world.