Samhain (sow-en), or the Celtic new year, celebrates the end of the harvest and the waning of the seasonal light. Ancient Druids believed the veil between the worlds was thinnest at this time, and that spirits of the dead could walk among the living. They built sacred bonfires, made predictions for the coming year and offered sacrifices to the gods and spirits. Christians eventually adapted the Celtic rituals and celebrations to their All Hallows' Eve and All Saints' Day. The night before All Saints' Day became Halloween.

Halloween arrived in America in the mid-19th century with waves of Irish immigrants seeking to escape the potato famine. Customs, such as wearing a mask or costume to fool marauding spirits, begging for sweets and lighting special protective lanterns, turned into costumes, trick-or-treating and carved, candle-lit pumpkins.`

The Irish carved turnips, and sometimes rutabaga, to resemble faces, setting the grinning veggies in a window, lit from within by candles. The window lanterns were meant to keep out the spirit of a wandering soul named Jack, who was denied entry into heaven and hell after death, hence the name. Irish immigrants discovered the larger, easier-to-carve, bright orange pumpkins in America and abandoned trickier turnip sculpture.

Souling was a European Medieval tradition in which poor people went door-to-door begging for sweet breads in exchange for a promise to pray for the souls of the wealthier citizens' dearly departed.

If that were true, it would be a sad day for dentists and candy makers. The "Huffington Post" reported Americans purchase nearly 600 million pounds of candy for Halloween, dropping $2 billion on the sweet stuff.

Move over, Easter Bunny. Halloween is chocolate central, with 90 million pounds of the dark delish sold the week of Halloween. Easter comes in a distant second, at 65 million pounds, and Valentine's Day trails with a mere 48 million pounds of seductive sweets. Chocolate sales for Halloween are nearly twice that of sugar candy. Favorite treats of chocoholics everywhere: Snickers, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kat bars.

Spider-Man costumes came in a respectable third, just behind more than 2.5 million Batmans and almost 5 million princesses. Adults ditched romance for the enchanting – most went as witches. And, Fido and friends joined the neighborhood Halloween parade under deep cover; on Oct. 31, check out that really short pumpkin on your doorstep, wagging its tail.

The Village Halloween parade, televised live and attended by more than 2 million people, started in the early 1970s, in the courtyard of a NYC artists' cooperative in historic Greenwich Village. For fun, an off-Broadway puppeteer and mask-maker staged a wandering puppet show of giant masks and theatrical puppets. By the next year, the festival of huge puppets spilled over into the winding streets of the Village and an annual tradition was born.