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7 eerie things that actually happened on Halloween

  • A number of eerie happenings have actually occurred on the last night of October.
  • Coincidence? Maybe.
  • Famed magician Harry Houdini died on Halloween in 1926.
  • The radio broadcast "War of the Worlds" caused mass hysteria on Halloween Eve in 1938.

On Halloween Eve in 1938, Americans tuning in to CBS radio programming got an eerie interruption: "Martians have invaded New Jersey!" At the time, the pre-Halloween allusion to extraterrestrials caused mass hysteria for thousands of listeners around the country.

Although it was simply a radio play by Orson Welles titled "War of the Worlds," most listeners didn't realize this. In fact, according to NPR, "about 12 million people were listening when Welles' broadcast came on the air and 'about 1 in every 12 ... thought it was true and ... some percentage of that 1 million people ran out of their homes.'"

This panic-inducing radio broadcast is just one example of a spooky happening that has occurred on Halloween (or the night before the notoriously chilling holiday).

While a number of murders and crimes have taken place on Halloween, a variety of less violent but equally eerie events have also coincidentally unfolded on the holiday. Keep reading to see what they are.

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