Think back over the month. Two boys tape flyers to every pole in the neighborhood, promising horrors beyond imagining; their actual haunted house is a basement, a bed, and a blanket. Their only customer screams at the first station and will not come out from under the bed. Weeks later, on the one night the whole neighborhood plays at being scared, real fear arrives in a pickup truck with a fire extinguisher — and the night ends with a father, keeping watch in the dark, pouring a garbage can of water on the two smallest trick-or-treaters on the street.

Halloween is far older than candy bars. More than two thousand years ago, Celtic communities in Ireland and Britain marked the end of the harvest with a festival called Samhain, when people believed the border between the living and the dead grew thin for one night. Villagers lit great bonfires and wore rough disguises so that any wandering spirits might mistake them for spirits too and pass them by. Centuries later, children went ‘guising’ door to door, offering a song or a rhyme in exchange for cakes and coins — the direct ancestor of trick-or-treating.

Irish families carried these customs to America in the 1800s, where they slowly changed shape. The carved turnip lantern of the old country met the American pumpkin — bigger, softer, easier to carve — and the jack-o’-lantern was born. By the middle of the 1900s, neighborhoods had turned the wandering-spirits night into a children’s tradition of costumes, porch lights, and candy given by the handful. The ancient festival survives inside the modern one: we still dress as things we fear, still walk the dark streets in groups, and still believe — for one night — that a costume can keep trouble from recognizing you. As one soaked sixth grader could testify, it does not always work.

No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.