Ghosts of Halloween Past 1980's Part 1

Hagatha is looking into her crystal ball taking us back to the 80's 

I decided to do some posts celebrating Halloween. I have always been fascinated with transformation key reason I got into makeup. Halloween is an interesting time when we all get to live out a fantasy of sorts. Shall we take a look back at some Halloween past. I was born in the 70's though I recall most vividly the 80's Halloween fun. We were allowed to have Halloween parties at school back then. Our parents back then thought nothing of putting us in flammable costumes with plastic masks. You'd purchase them at the department store. You could tell the hot sellers for you would see 20 bride barbies and Casper the Friendly Ghosts roaming the street. What I think was so special about being a kid at this time. I got to see the evolution of  Halloween . Where you could walk the streets of your neighborhood with a pillow sack and get candy. Allot of times people made the halloween treats for there trick or treats. It was like a block party of sorts where the streets were crowded. Around the mid 80's this changed drastically Halloween got scary on many levels. There were reports of people putting razor blades in candy even poisoning children. so your parents had to check your candy. Police would even set up candy check centers at local community centers. This put an end to Caramel popcorn balls and Candy apples which made my dentist happy. This is when the decline of neighborhood trick or treating started. Girls and Boys Clubs, Churches, Malls started to host safe Halloween events. If you still trick or treated it was only to close friends and family mostly. I wish the younger generation could experience the way it was then. You'd run into your friends from school swap candy show each other your costumes.   So I decided to look at the 1980s first so shall we go back .

 


Toys R Us Real Ghost Story

"Johnny Johnson is the name of the ghost haunting the Sunnyvale Toys'R'Usin California. He does not haunt the Toys'R'Us specifically, but he does haunt the land that it was built on. As the building was built on the same piece of land that he died on.Before the Toys'R'Us was built, the area where it is today was a farm. Johnny Johnson was a farmer during the 1800s. Johnny Johnson was not actually his former name. He was an immigrant by the name of Johann Yansen. But his collages called him Johnny Johnson.Johnson was apparently a mentally challenge man.Johnson fell in love with the ranch owner's daughter, Beth Murphy. Although it was known that he was infatuated with her among the ranch hands, Johnson was never able to tell Beth that he loved her. As a result, he was devastated when Beth moved away to Boston to live with her new husband.Johnny became very depressed  He also caught a viral infection that damaged his brain (Witch may be the source of his supposed mental disability . One day Johnson was told to chop wood. He was later found dead near the farm well. He had hacked into his own leg and bled to death."

So here is one of many products that were rocking our Halloween back in the 1980's

The Pumpkin Cutter 




We shall stop here in our next post we will talk about the glow in the dark craze of the 1980s . We will also look at what I believe to be the pinnacle of that decade of Halloween. Michael Jackson's Thriller  video many other trick or treats in store stay tuned