This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Halloween, the fall holiday and $13.5 billion industry, lurks around the corner. But what's behind the more than 11,000 acres of pumpkin patches (4,450 hectares) across Canada and $3.9 billion in consumer spending on candy alone?
Halloween has ancient origins in the pre-Christian religion and practices of the Celts. It was customary to honor the transitions between the seasons and harvest, acknowledge the thin veil between different planes of existence and also to commemorate the dead. Modern-day commercialization has shifted how people experience Halloween, but the spirits of the dead continue to play a significant role in the occasion and the time of year.
The day's appeal and its marketability extend beyond a one-day "holiday." Many people are drawn to carefully curated encounters, seeking thrilling yet sanitized experiences that allow them to engage with the macabre and mortality from a safe distance. Consequently, Halloween's commercial success in commodifying dread and the monstrous can be analyzed alongside broader "dark tourism"—an umbrella term that explores tourism involvement with sites of death, disaster and a difficult heritage. Anthropologist Philip Stone notes that a range of motivations exist for promoting engagement with death, disaster and the macabre: for example, political reasons or remembrance, education, entertainment or economic gain.
So how should we think about worldwide Halloween-related attractions that not only seek to entertain but also promote interpretation and engagement with sites marketed as scary, which often have genuinely dark pasts? For example, a tourism attraction at Eastern State Penitentiary—a former prison in Philadelphia—markets itself as a Halloween festival of epic proportions. The onetime prison was an 11-acre (4.5-hectare) institution that was the first jail in the United States to introduce the practice of solitary confinement in the late 1800s.
In the late '90s, the property switched gears, launched "Terror Behind the Walls" as an annual haunted house and then rebranded as "Halloween Nights." The facility notes that proceeds from Halloween Nights benefit a mission to preserve the site and advance "public understanding of the criminal justice system and its impact on the lives of those affected by it [and] to inspire a more just future," including through public education and exhibits. Another example is Fort Henry in Kingston, Ontario. Although Fort Henry was never a battlefield site, it was the site of an 1838 execution.
It was also used as a prison for combatants captured during the 1837–38 Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada and again during World War I and World War II for "civilian enemy aliens." Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100,000 subscribers who rely on Phys.org for daily insights. d research that matter—daily or weekly. Today, coffin rides and a monster shooting range are part of the heritage sites tourist attraction called Fort Fright, which simulates a haunted attraction and experience throughout the month of October leading up to Halloween. Historical educational programming exists through the year.
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