This is probably due to that one chapter in Karen’s Pumpkin Patch, the children’s book I wasn’t expecting to resonate with me even half as much as it did, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the night before Halloween. In most areas, it’s known as Mischief Night, but I’ve heard it referred to by other names too, such as Devil’s Night, Cabbage Night, and, as it is referred to in my area of northern New Jersey, Goosey Night. (Also worth noting, it’s my mother’s birthday. I asked her to trade me several times throughout my childhood, as a part of me didn’t think she “deserved” a Halloween-related birthday as the holiday meant very little to her.)
I long wondered why it was called “Goosey” night. As a young child, I thought that there must be some famous goose that I knew nothing about, that had laid her eggs on a house many years ago, hence the “egging” tradition, but the true explanation seems much more simple: “Goosey” was just a term synonymous with being foolish or flighty back in the old days, so “Goosey Night” was the perfect name for a time to act as such.
Goosey Night was always considered a bad thing when I was growing up. In my neighborhood, the traditional egg and toilet paper pranks were a tiny tip of the iceberg. The kids that partook in Goosey Night, partook in actual property damage in most cases. One year when I was very small, a group of kids actually lit a brush fire in the woods by the end of my street. Mailboxes and car windows were often broken…nothing was safe. My parents dreaded it.
I knew about this, but I also found toilet paper hanging from trees almost to be a decoration while trick-or-treating. The neighborhood I did most of my trick-or-treating in (my own was too small and spread out to spend my entire Halloween there) actually had a tradition of allowing the kids to go out and do some of the more traditional stuff, during a certain time frame, probably in an attempt to steer them away from doing worse. I’m not sure how much it helped, as a woman there that my aunt knew once had a paintball shot at her brand new siding, but the toilet paper in the trees always served as a sort of a reminder of the mischief that Halloween was supposed to be about.
I never thought about Goosey Night in relation to myself until I was ten years old. Until then, it was always the spooky and exciting night before Halloween to me, never thinking about what it would be like to actually do something on that night. (Aside from celebrate my very lucky mother’s birthday, of course!) But, when I got to school on that morning, suddenly all the kids were talking about what they were doing for Goosey Night. I’d always thought of it as more of a teenage thing, but my fifth-grade classmates seemed to be psyched for it. They weren’t talking about doing anything truly damaging; mostly I think it was just about the thrill of being out on that night, and I started to realize just how fun it sounded. As I watched their excited faces, I squirmed in my seat, wishing I could call my mother right then and there and beg to go out myself. (This was also the year of the Cinderella Incident, and I didn’t want to be more of a “baby” by not participating in Goosey Night, though no one asked me if I was. They probably just assumed not, based on everything that had gone on during that Halloween season.) My mother was usually good about letting me get away with things, and it wasn’t like I was planning on breaking things or starting a fire or anything even close to that. On the bus ride home, even children much younger than myself, second and third graders, were talking about their Goosey Night plans. I started to think that if Halloween was my Christmas, shouldn’t Goosey Night be my Christmas Eve? Halloween time was all about mischief, after all.
Unfortunately, my mother did not see it this way. I asked immediately upon getting home and was given a hard “no”. With everything the neighborhood had gone through over the years, she seemed appalled that I would even ask. Looking back on it, I honestly have no idea what I was planning to do, given how afraid I always was of getting in trouble, and of course the fact that I had no friends to go with me or anything. Imagine how much more suspicious I would have looked, alone! But I was completely crestfallen and felt like a part of my Halloween was being taken away, despite the fact that I’d never celebrated Goosey Night before and it made no difference to what was coming the next night. I remember considering sneaking out somehow, but I have no idea how I would have pulled that off, or where I would have gone. And of course, knowing how much my father hated Goosey Night and the kids that participated in it, I couldn’t risk being grounded on Halloween if I got caught! (That almost happened the following year when he was going through a photography phase and I got fed up with all the pictures he was taking and walked out of the frame of one of them mid-shot, but that’s another story for another day, I suppose.)
But my father’s obsession with protecting the property helped me a little. He would often walk up and down the street on and off for hours, usually with the dog, to keep an eye out for any kids looking for trouble. That year, I decided to go with him, thinking it was a way for me to at least be out and about and experiencing the night before Halloween. While we were walking (I can’t remember if this was the year that we actually did run into a pack of kids who thought my father was a cop and ditched their bags of toilet paper and eggs and stuff under my neighbors’ truck when they saw us.) I reached into the pockets of the jacket I was wearing, and pulled out some tissues, one at a time, and threw them into the night when I thought my father wasn’t looking. It was silly; I’m not even sure what gave me the idea beyond the fact that the tissues just happened to be there, but it felt like my own little way of participating in Goosey Night, while still obeying the rules.
I would later find out that my father saw the whole thing and was both confused as hell about what I was doing, and then amused as could be when he realized it.
I suppose this tiny act of tissue rebellion really struck a chord with my mother when she found out about it, because the following Halloween season, she agreed to letting me celebrate Goosey Night, but on very strict conditions: I had to stay on our own property and wasn’t allowed eggs or anything that would make a real mess. I was given some off-brand toilet paper that my mother bought while it was on sale and wound up being unimpressed with, and that was that.
I can’t remember whose decision this was, if it was my parents’ wishes or my own desire to stay out of trouble despite trouble being the whole point, but on top of celebrating Goosey Night by being given permission to TP my own property, I went outside to do this while it was still relatively light outside. But, I really got into the spirit of it. I wish that I somehow had a video of myself from that evening, having changed into all-black clothes, hoodie up, looking over my shoulders as if the neighbors (none of whom were probably even close enough to our property to even notice me) were going to call the cops for catching me stepping outside of my own house, and running in long strides over to the little forest-y area just beyond our deck. I ripped some toilet paper off the rolls and decorated some of the lower trees as if I were trying to adorn them with billowing ghosts, and that was it. It took maybe five or ten minutes, and, though I’d hyped myself up for possibly sneaking away for more, I didn’t have the guts to go anywhere near where someone else might see it. I felt underwhelmed and yet accomplished at the same time. I’d done it; I’d celebrated Goosey Night, but it hadn’t been very exciting at all.
Nonetheless, I continued to do this for a couple of years until I got bored with it. One year, I’m not sure how old I was but probably closer to my teens, I actually snuck two eggs outside but chickened out and put them back. I’m not sure what I would have egged, anyway, but I think I did it to try and bring back the excitement of when I was ten, thinking Goosey Night could be my Christmas Eve. Over time, it eventually became a joke, how I would TP the little trees outside just for the sake of celebrating a “holiday” that was otherwise dreaded in my neighborhood. It was more of a funny tradition than anything else.
Goosey Night continued on fine without me, though. One year when I was in high school, some group of kids, I’m still not sure who, actually managed to dig two of my neighbors’ mailboxes out of the ground and switch them! How they did that without getting caught, as I’d imagine it took a decent amount of time, remains absolutely beyond me to this day. Another year, in my early twenties, I woke up on Halloween to my mother screaming because the back windshield of her car had been bashed in, and it turned out it had happened to every car on the street that was remotely accessible the night before. I believe there was also an incident of some nails in tires that year as well. I suppose I just have too much respect for other people’s things to have ever truly gotten into whatever “spirit” it takes to “celebrate” in that way, and that’s fine by me.
Sometimes I do wish Goosey Night, or whatever you wish to call it, would somehow find its way back to just being a night of harmless pranks. It would be a fun extension of Halloween; the “trick” before the “treat”, so to speak, as Halloween time has always felt mischievous. But, at least, I’m grateful that I have these silly memories of it, as cringey as they’d probably be if I could somehow physically see them again. It’s far better than the criminal record the other kids from my neighborhood probably have.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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