Old Fashion Halloween

This article was originaly presented in a feature called "And the Way That We Did it Was This... An Exchange of Party Ideas", conducted by Betty Somerville in the Hallowe'en issue of Parties magazine. Readers were encouraged to send in stories about parties which had been "a trifle gayer, perhaps, with more colorful decorations; brighter, merrier games and stunts."

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An Underworld Cruise for Hallowe’en

By K.W., Glenside, PA

Published in Parties Magazine, 1930.

Halloween is just the time for classmates to entertain their lower classmates at the annual freshmen-Sophomore party. The freshmen have been in school long enough to begin to feel themselves a part of the institution and the nature of the holiday permits "the sophs" to do as much spoofing as the law allows.

A yachting party on the Styx was a jolly affair given at Glenwood last year. The invitations were headed "Ship Ahoy" and read:

Oh, won’t you come a- sailing
Upon the river Styx,
To meet a crew of ghostly gobs
And join them in their tricks?
We’ll sail the good ship Trophet
On a spooky Hallowe’en cruise
And call on Stygian darkness
To chase away the blues.

The party was held in the gym, which was decorated to resemble the deck of a ship. Huge black cambric sails were sewed to ropes stretched far from the rafters to the floor, flags contained Hallowe’en symbols, and life preservers, cut from black cardboard, were decorated with skulls and crossbones cut from white paper. Each freshmen was presented with one of the life preservers and was told not to drop it all evening, or he would have to pay a forfeit, making a most amusing handicap for them during the games.

The ship was in total darkness when the guests arrived, whistles were tooting and sirens were blowing. A gangplank had been arranged at the entrance at a most difficult angle, and each freshman in turn was assisted up its incline and made to take a leap in the dark and then was left stranded.

Ship’s lanterns, which were really Jack o’ lanterns with red and green tissue paper pasted over the features, were placed along the sides of the room and were lighted as the guests had assembled.

Before the games started, the freshman class was introduced collectively, with many jokes and friendly jibes, to the ship mascot, "the old sea dog" Cerebus, a perfectly ridiculous animal cut from heavy cardboard and grotesquely painted. His mouth was a yawning hole, and every freshman had to write on a slip of paper the one thing he or she hated in Glenwood and drop it into the mouth as a sop to Cerebus. Later when these slips were read aloud, they created a great deal of amusement.

Several games were played on the deck. There was shuffleboard laid out in squares with white chalk, on which they knocked about with a hockey stick a black wooden block on which was painted in white the features of a skull’s head. Everyone was allowed one shot and the number written in the square where the skull stopped spinning was the score.

The freshmen were then divided into two sides, and lined up facing each other, three or four feet apart, to play the hilarious game of Hallowe’en Holystoning. A row of confetti, orange for one side and black for the other, was sprinkled in front of each line, and when the ship’s bell sounded, everyone had to kneel and brush into his hand as much of the other sides confetti as he possibly could. The winners were the side that got its confetti swept up first and the sophs acted as referees.

After this strenuous game, the captain announced that there would be a stop-over at the River Lethe, the famous under-world river of forgetfulness. Here each sophomore presented freshmen with a list of things which must be remembered by him throughout the year-ridiculous ideas suggesting ways to pay one’s respects to upper classes.

The clever sophomore, dressed in the ragged robes and the long white beard of the Ancient Mariner, boarded the ship and made them sit around him while he told a most terrifying story, during which a committee passed cider and doughnuts. After the story had reached its gruesome end, the "sops to Cerebus" were read, and amid shouts of laughter the freshmen disembarked.