The Johnson Victrola Museum in Dover is presenting a virtual program Halloween weekend.
The program is set for Friday, Oct. 30, 2020 and offers a bit of a historical perspective on Halloween, according to the Johnson Victrola Museum lead interpreter Christopher Hall.
“So we’re doing a program called “Mischief Managed: Throwing a Hotsy-Totsy Halloween Bash.” We decided to do a nice virtual program - kind of a history of what Halloween was like in the 1920’s," said Hall. "So Halloween actually became a mainstream holiday in the ‘20’s, with trick-or-treating starting in 1927.”
Hall notes that Halloween was initially embraced as a holiday to deter children from going out and vandalizing things.
The idea was to make it a main-stream holidaym with parties, trick-or-treating and parades, to reign in some of the chaos and replace it with a fun, family holiday.
Hall says the virtual program will be accompanied by 78-rpm recordings of Halloween-related music played on authentic Victor (Victrola) Talking Machines.
Hall says examples of that music include “The Spooky Spooks” - which sounds like a standard haunted house-themed music - and “Skeleton Jangle” - which features a lot of xylophones.
“ Mischief Managed: Throwing a Hotsy-Totsy Halloween Bash” will be available on Facebook Live Friday, October 30 starting at 6 p.m. People can also register to participate via Zoom at the museum’s Facebook page.