  Ggores Member Username: Ggores Post Number: 462 Registered: 10-2007 |
I'm not too shocked that nobody has started a "Devil's Night in Detroit and Nostalgia Memories" thread here. So, guess I will. Ahem. Devil's Night, as I understand, originated in New Jersey, and based upon the mythical "Jersey Devil", who, on some certain night (Halloween Eve I suppose) would muck about the town and set little fires, shoot dogs with a BB gun, and so forth. And somehow, Detroiters latched onto the legend and reinvented it. That's the short story. I also think that I learned this by reading a book called "Devil's Night and Other Things That Happened in Detroit" (or something like that), many years ago. There really did USED to be a Devil's Night. In school, the Teachers acknowledged it. At home, the parents acknowledged it. "Now don't be TOO bad tonight, you 'lil devil" is something many a kid would be told. It was a day in which little pranks were played on Teachers at school. Maybe I participated in the old thumbtack on the Teachers chair bit, but I don't think it ever worked. I seem to remember that one kid was successful, and the results were not too great - for anybody. Ha ha. I guess one of the most popular - and devilish - pranks to pull would be to rub bath soap on someone's car windows. Most likely, this would be some old codger that yelled profanities at the kids throughout the rest of the year. But shit, if I was ever caught walking out the house with a bar of soap in my pocket - LOOK OUT! This would be considered delinquent embezzlement, and dealt with severity by Mom's. Having been raised in The Neighborhood, I can say that, really, I don't recall ever doing too many devilish things - on Devil's Night. Another popular Devil's Night activity would be to ring a doorbell of a neighbor, and then run. More daringly, one might even go up to a living room window, peek inside, knock on the window, make a goofy face at the resident, and then beat feet. Think I pulled that one off a couple times. All in all, it was simply similar to Christmas Eve. Excitement filled the air. The last Devil's Night I can remember participating in was probably around 1982 or so. Me and a few friends sat on the I-96 overpass and lobbed eggs at cars driving the freeway. Now, before anybody becomes appalled at this, let me just say - they weren't bowling balls, and we definitely were aware of the non-fatal consequences. But let me tell ya what... there was a car that swiftly pulled off the freeway exit ramp and cut across the over pass towards us. And I believe we ran a full mile, all the way to Stoepel just to evade. I also remember freaking out over all the flames dotting the horizons across The Neighborhood. Well, just like Trick-or-Treating, I guess we all grew out of it, and like I said, that was the last time I went out for Devil's Night to conduct devilish deeds. The other 364 days of the year could, and would, have much more scary events. And as many on here have accurately noted - 1984 came. But I'm not gonna go there, or beyond there. This is just a simple recollection of when there was a Devil's Night, a holiday of sorts, and of when there were no crazy curfews, and we actually thought that Devil's Night was celebrated all across the country. Years later I would also learn that this night was almost exclusively bound to Detroit. Thank you New Jersey! | ||
Jcole Member Username: Jcole Post Number: 4397 Registered: 04-2005 |
It's called Mischief Night in Jersey, and they still celebrate it there. They, too, had an escalation of arsons through the nineties. | ||
Denbytar64 Member Username: Denbytar64 Post Number: 38 Registered: 03-2008 |
The devils night in my hood (harper & chalmers) back in the day was throwing eggs at houses, soaping windows was all that happen. Yes we got caught a few times, but were back the next year...foolish little pranks, compared to what is done these days. I am sure I have been paid back by karma throughout the years for my actions on devils night. | ||
Blueidone Member Username: Blueidone Post Number: 376 Registered: 03-2007 |
I grew up in the Berkely/Pleasant Ridge/ Huntington Woods area 1953 to 1965. I remember going out for Devil's Night...but it was just fun stuff, nothing destructive. We used to cut notches in wooden spools from thread (remember those?), wind a cord around them, place them up against a window and pull the cord. Made a pretty scary sound! We would ring doorbells, maybe hang some TP, use soap on windows too. But I never would have considered doing anything to destroy anyone's property. I never understood the need for that. I'm 59 now and and I still don't. | ||
Jcole Member Username: Jcole Post Number: 4398 Registered: 04-2005 |
Over on the Eastside, we would do pretty much the same stuff, soap windows, ring doorbells. The 'bad' kids would use paraffin wax on car windows and egg cars. My dad told us back when he was a kid in the '20's, they would fill a bag with dog crap, put it on someones porch, light it on fire and ring the doorbell. They'd hang around across the street to watch the people run out of the house and start stamping out the bag on fire. Yukkk. | ||
Eastburn Member Username: Eastburn Post Number: 523 Registered: 03-2008 |
That wasn't your Dad who told you that. It was me. Or maybe both of us. | ||
Leticiaweb Member Username: Leticiaweb Post Number: 27 Registered: 09-2008 |
We all know what happens on Halloween, the night that little boys and girls dress up and (unwittingly) celebrate the ancient Celtic tradition of Samhain and All Hallows Eve. Anyone who has woken up on Halloween morning to find their house egged, their pumpkin smashed or yard toilet-papered, however, is lucky enough to live where a sister tradition that is not quite as old (but a yearly custom all the same) is also practiced with fervor. The night of Oct. 30, which goes by a variety of names including Devil's Night in Detroit and Miggy Night in parts of England, sees neighborhood youngsters pull pranks just as diverse as the custom's monikers, ranging from the innocent to the downright dangerous. So where did this license to cause mayhem come from? Mischief Night, as it is most commonly known in the United States, has been around in its present form for at least 50 years, when it became a day for playing "tricks" while Halloween itself was reserved for the little one to gather "treats." The practice goes back hundreds of years before that, though, to a time when Halloween and misbehavior were inextricably linked. In some areas, unfortunately, today's pranks have evolved into acts much scarier than ghosts or goblins. Mischief always a part of Halloween Causing mischief has been a part of the Halloween tradition since the very beginning. The most ancient roots of Halloween come from the Celts of Great Britain, who believed that the day before their Nov. 1 New Year was a time when spirits came back to haunt and play tricks. On Oct. 31, people dressed up in scary costumes, played games, lit bonfires and left food out on their doorsteps for the ghosts in celebration of this otherworldly event, which the Celts called Samhain. When Great Britain was Christianized in the 800s, the ghoulish games of Samhain merged with All Saints Day and All Souls Day, during which the dead were honored with parades and door-to-door solicitation by peasants for treats - usually a bit of food or money. After the Protestant Reformation, much of England stopped the "treating" side of Halloween because it was connected to Catholic saints, and transferred the trickery to the eve of Guy Fawkes Night, a Nov. 5 holiday celebrating the foiling of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up British Parliament. Mischief Night in England is still celebrated on Nov. 4. The Irish, Scottish and northern English, meanwhile, kept up much of their Halloween traditions, including the good-natured misbehavior, and brought their ways to North America with the wave of immigration in the 1800s. Before the 20th century, Halloween mischief in the United States and Canada happened on Oct. 31 and consisted of tipping over outhouses, unhinging farmer's gates, throwing eggs at houses and the like. By the 1920s and 30s, however, the celebrations had become more like a rowdy block party, and the acts of vandalism more serious, probably instigated by tensions over the Great Depression and the threat of war, historians say. To stem the vandalism, concerned parents and town leaders tried to ply kids with candy, encouraging the forgotten tradition of trick-or-treating in costume in exchange for sweets, bumping the mischief element from the celebrations of Oct. 31 altogether. It was then that the troublemakers, neighborhood by neighborhood, adopted Oct. 30 as their day to pull pranks. Rotten vegetables The custom of vandalism on Oct. 30, oddly, seems to have only developed sporadically, often appearing in some areas but not at all in others nearby. Nowadays, Mischief Night is especially popular in pockets where Irish and Scottish immigration was common - in northeastern United States but not in the South and West, for example, and in the English-speaking communities of Canada but not the French. Examples of the regional varieties include: * Cabbage Night in parts of the northeastern United States, where rotten vegetables are collected and left on porch stoops or smeared on doors and windows. * Mat Night in English-speaking Quebec, where pranksters steal doormats and switch them with the neighbors'. * Gate Night, in the Midwest, where farmers gates are opened, leaving livestock to roam free. Other popular pranks include the ubiquitous toilet-papering of homes and trees, "soaping" cars and windows and pumpkin smashing. Though it consists of harmless fun in most places, "Devil's Night" in Detroit is notorious for its ties to gang culture and random acts of arson. In 1984, more than 800 fires were set there on Devil's Night, leading to a serious crackdown and an Oct. 30 curfew for minors that persists to this day. This year, the mayor of Detroit has recruited an army of more than 30,000 volunteers to patrol their neighborhoods to prevent any similar mayhem. | ||
Jcole Member Username: Jcole Post Number: 4403 Registered: 04-2005 |
EB, it was my dad. You also mentioned it, but it was for sure my dad who told me first. | ||
Gibran Member Username: Gibran Post Number: 4203 Registered: 02-2007 |
I was crowned the door bell king of Wayburn..remember someone ratting me out for soaping a car window..and having to go to Lansdowne to clean-it up after the police came to my house...didn't know who to fear more Mom or the police....it was mom... | ||
Jcole Member Username: Jcole Post Number: 4404 Registered: 04-2005 |
EB, anyway, you weren't a kid in the '20's. Were you?? | ||
Flanders_field Member Username: Flanders_field Post Number: 1221 Registered: 01-2008 |
One Devils Night around oh...say 1972 or so, my friends and I decided to have a midnight seance at the Gethsemane Cemetery near the City Airport. One of my friends really prepared for it by getting a seance book from the library and brought candles and other related items to use for our seance. We all went to the cemetery dressed in black and performed it at the stroke of midnight at a large tombstone. Fortunately, it was a warm night, and not windy or raining. Afterward, we decided to explore the cemetery. One of the guys managed to find a above ground mausoleum, and the entrance door was unlocked. We ventured inside and discovered an old wooden coffin without a body in it! This seemed almost too good to be true, but there it was!! Ready for enterprising young teens like us to make use of it somehow!!! We removed the coffin from the mausoleum and carried it back across Gratiot. We then put the shortest and lightest guy in our group inside it and carried it in sort of a funeral procession around the neighborhoods. People driving past us on the streets saw what we were doing and honked their horns, and waved or yelled and gave us the thumbs up. Later on we started to get tired of carrying it, so we went up to a few houses, put the coffin down on the porches, and left the lid open with the guy inside with his hands and arms crossed holding a lit candle. One of us would ring the doorbell several times, as after all it was well past midnight by then, and we wanted to be sure to wake up the homeowner. We ran away and hid behind trees, cars, and shrubs. Sometimes no one came to the door, but a few did, and they would usually yell or cuss, and slam their door shut. One was a woman that screamed, when finding out what was on the porch, and then dumped a bunch of fruit into the coffin!! Of all the Devil's Night "events" that I participated in during my years of living in Detroit, this night is in my top 10. | ||
Eastburn Member Username: Eastburn Post Number: 524 Registered: 03-2008 |
J, almost but not quite. I think your Dad & I would have gotten along. Any guy who'll straddle 2 speeding cars is my kind of guy. FF, great story! | ||
Gnome Member Username: Gnome Post Number: 2046 Registered: 08-2007 |
One Devil's Night we stole the sign to a reputed gay bar and placed it on our football coach's front porch. We stole that sign on more than one occasion. Once we put it on the high school's roof in time for graduation. A lot of shocked parents that year. | ||
Winstin_o_boogie_iii Member Username: Winstin_o_boogie_iii Post Number: 175 Registered: 02-2007 |
I recall CKLW playing Orson Welles' War of the Worlds on its 30th anniversary, 40 years ago... http://www.rense.com/general4/ hgnyt.htm (Message edited by Winstin_o_boogie_iii on October 30, 2008) | ||
Dannyv Member Username: Dannyv Post Number: 453 Registered: 08-2007 |
Flanders field, that was brilliant. My most memorable Devil's Night had me and friend on either side of a car, him on the curbside soaping the side windows, me on the streetside writing obscenities in lipstick. I hear a sharp yell and it's my buddy being nabbed by the car owner. I ran off and stayed gone from home until as late as possible. Confronted by my folks about my misadventure, it was too late for me to have to clean up the mess I made. My bud who got caught did. | ||
Reddog289 Member Username: Reddog289 Post Number: 668 Registered: 08-2007 |
I must be getting old cause I took out my black light off the porch and put the real one in when i remembered it was Devils night. | ||
Danny Member Username: Danny Post Number: 7881 Registered: 02-2004 |
Devil's Night in Detroit in 1983 was the worst every during the Young years. Over 890 arson fires over the black ghettohoods of Detroit in two nights before Halloween. Since Coleman Young didn't nothing to stop those pre-Halloween arson fires Dennis Archer when he was a city worker planned a volunteer force to patrol the ghettohoods looking for arsonists. Later his plan worked and pre-Halloween arson fires were down fast. | ||
Ggores Member Username: Ggores Post Number: 463 Registered: 10-2007 |
dANNY, You're assessment is, as usual, spot-0n and well articulated. Happy 'Alloween everybody! | ||
Elimarr Member Username: Elimarr Post Number: 90 Registered: 09-2007 |
A prank not yet mentioned (yet common among my childhood friends) was going down the Detroit alleys and pulling down peoples garbage cans. That, along with soaping, doorbells, and egging the real cranks of the neighborhood, was pretty much the set repertoire I remember. These were always done in a group of two or more kids. Unfortunately, if you are running down an alley pulling the cans down and the kid in front of you pulls one into your path you will not only fall down but you can wind up with with a scarred leg many years later. I know this to be true. | ||
Erikto Member Username: Erikto Post Number: 747 Registered: 11-2003 |
Leticiaweb's post mentioned 'Mat Night'- it was definitely a significant night in Montreal when I was a kid, but there didn't seem to be a popular Toronto version when I moved here in 1990. Naturally, young punks went beyond the mere switching of door mats, but there was never the serious damage that seems to have been routine in Detroit and various other American cities. |
