Updated Aug 11, 2025
This kit was created to assist you or your group in completing the Chills & Thrills patch program. Kits are written specifically to meet the requirements of the program and help individuals earn the associated patch. All of the information has been researched for you and compiled into one place. Included are facts, crafts, games, recipes and other educational information. These materials can be reproduced and distributed to the individuals completing the program. Any other use of this program and the materials contained in it is in direct violation of copyright laws.
Scottish folklore believe a black or dark green dog known as a Cù Sìth takes the soul of a dying person to the afterlife.
The Festival of Samhain is an old Irish term for “Summer’s End.” The festival marked the end of the harvest season and was when people took stock of their food in preparation for the long winter to come. It was also when the souls of the dead came back home.
The Celtics believed that the door to the otherworld opened during Samhain and the souls of the dead, as well as other mystical beings such as fairies, could cross over into our world. The souls of dead kinsmen were invited to join in the festivities, and people even set places for them at tables in hopes of appeasing the spirits with gifts of food. However, Samhain also allowed harmful spirits to enter our world, so people disguised themselves in costumes on this night so as not to be recognized.
In 18th-century Ireland, boys would go to each house asking for fuel for the Samhain bonfire, and in the 19th century, people went door-to-door to collect food for the Samhain feast. Sometimes the collectors would wear costumes, such as southern Ireland’s white mare. The tradition was that a man dressed as a white mare would lead children door-to-door begging food for the feast. Those who gave food could expect good fortune from the “Muck Olla,” a being who some say was a druid and others claim that she was a goddess.
Another common practice in parts of Ireland and Scotland was the carving of turnips into jack-o’-lanterns. The term jack-o’-lantern originated from ignis fatuss or will-o’-the-wisp, known as receding lights over a bog, but others say that the jack-o’-lantern got its name from a different source.
There are many old Irish folk tales of Stingy Jack, a smart but lazy farmer who traps the Devil with a cross. One story tells how Jack was being chased by some angry villagers whom he had stolen from when he bumped into the Devil. The Devil told Jack that it was time for him to die, but Jack managed to stall for time. He tempted the Devil with a chance to do evil by saying that if the Devil turned into a coin, he would give it to the villagers to pay for what he had stolen. The Devil/coin would then disappear, making the villagers fight amongst themselves over who had stolen the coin. The Devil fell for the trick, turning into a coin and jumping into Jack’s wallet, where the shrewd farmer had hidden a cross. The cross drained the Devil of his power, and so he was trapped. Jack refused to free the Devil until he agreed not to take his soul for a year. The Devil reluctantly agreed.
Jack had planned to use the year to repent for his sins, but as time went by, he never did. At the end of the year, the Devil returned to take Jack’s soul, but the Devil was tricked into climbing an apple tree to pick a piece of fruit. While the Devil was distracted with the hanging fruit, Jack carved crosses into the tree’s bark so the Devil couldn’t get back down until he promised not to take his soul again. But as life went on, Jack died, as all things that live do. However, Jack’s soul could not go to heaven; he had sinned too much, and he could not go to hell, for the Devil had promised not to take his soul.
So Jack was left with nowhere to go and no way to see where to go since he had no light. The Devil mockingly gave Jack an ember that would never burn out from the flames of hell. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with it ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as “Jack of the Lantern,” or simply “Jack-o’-lantern.” Jack-o’-lanterns were used to light one’s way during the Samhain night, to represent spirits, and may also have been used to ward off spirits and fairies.
All Saints’ Day, also known as All Souls’ Day, or All Hallows, was a day for honouring the saints and praying for the recently departed who had not yet reached heaven. All Saints’ Day is the second day of Hallowsmas.
It starts on the eve of October 31, All Hallows Evening, and ends at sundown on November 01. “Souling” is a custom practiced on All Hallows’ Eve where people bake small, round cakes called “soul cakes” to share with groups of poor folk, most often children, who go door-to-door singing and saying prayers for the dead. Each cake eaten was said to represent a soul being freed from Purgatory.
It was a traditional Christian belief that the souls of the dead wandered the Earth until All Saints’ Day and that spirits could get revenge on their enemies during All Hallows’ Eve. To avoid being harmed by these souls, people would wear masks or costumes to disguise who they were.
Long before pumpkin carving became popular, people carved turnips into jack-o’-lanterns.
Halloween didn’t emerge in North America until the 19th century, when Irish and Scottish immigration was at its highest. The celebration of Samhain and All Saints’ Day was carried over to America along with the tradition of Souling and carving jack-o-lanterns; however, carving pumpkins soon replaced carving turnips. Pumpkins were more readily available than turnips, were bigger, and were easier to carve.
Today, Halloween is celebrated by people of all ages in many different ways. But no matter which Halloween beginning you believe in, take time to enjoy it and have a safe night.
Many know of the evil Count Dracula as the most dangerous of all vampires, but you’ll find that most people don’t know much more about him, except for those who have done their research. Who is this monster whom we so readily dress up as on Halloween? Well, Dracula is the stereotypical vampire that started it all. Count Dracula is no more than a character out of a book called Dracula, which was written by Bram Stoker in 1897. The novel is about Dracula’s attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England in his attempt to take over the world. A small group of men and women, led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing, try to stop him. Historians have determined that Count Dracula was inspired by a real-life Transylvanian-born man known as Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad the Impaler. The name Dracula means “son of Dracul,” and Vlad II Dracul was the real-life father of Dracula. Bram Stoker links the historical Dracula to his vampire in Dracula at least twice. Today, Dracula’s influence is seen through the commercial vampire, especially around Halloween when costumes appear with high collars and capes, painted faces and sharp fangs.
Just like Count Dracula, the character Frankenstein also started out as a book titled Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, which was written by Mary Shelley in 1818. This novel is about a man named Victor Frankenstein who wanted to create life. Using the remains of dead humans and animals, Victor created a monster. Rejected by Victor for his hideous appearance, the monster finds Victor's family, learns from them, and then kills them when they don’t accept him. More family members die after the monster meets with Victor again and demands a female companion, which Victor refuses. The monster then hunts down Victor’s wife and murders her, and then Victor’s second wife as Victor tries to put an end to his creation. Victor’s hunt for the monster leads him to the Arctic, where Victor himself finally passes away. The monster mourns the death of his creator and vows to kill himself before disappearing into the darkness. Today, the name Frankenstein is associated with the monster instead of the monster’s creator, and is seen as a lumbering creature made of patches of skin sewn together.
Halloween comes from the blending of two traditions, the Festival of Samhain, where spirits of the dead come back for one night, and Christianity’s All Saints’ Day, which was a time of praying for the recently departed who had not yet reached Heaven. Spirits have been a part of the festivities since the origin of Halloween and remain a strong part of the tradition today. Because of the Festival of Samhain, Halloween ghosts are seen as mischievous and tricky, pulling pranks and causing all sorts of trouble for their own amusement.
Throughout history, humans have been both intrigued and fearful of magic. During the Early Modern period (1400 – 1800), witchcraft came to be seen as part of a vast diabolical conspiracy of individuals in league with the Devil undermining Christianity. This fear grew into mass hysteria, which quickly led to witch-hunts. A person could be accused of practicing witchcraft for many reasons: one way was if a person was caught in the act of sorcery; another was if a well-meaning sorcerer or healer lost their clients’ or authorities’ trust; a third way was if a person did nothing more than gain the enmity of their neighbours; fourth was if a person was reputed to be a witch and surrounded with an aura of witch-beliefs.
Europeans of the Early Modern period had three different classifications for witches:
However, even though the witch hunts have passed, the fear of witches was significant enough to have impacted history. There is now one day of the year when witches, dressed in black or dark purple, are often seen roaming the streets. They carry brooms or wave their hands to cast magic spells, going door to door asking for a sweet treat on Halloween.
Before the popular movie Night of the Living Dead, made by George Romero, the belief that zombies could exist was mainly confined to one continent: Africa. It is from the West African word “nzambi” that we get the English word “zombie.” The zombies were believed to be animated corpses that were resurrected by mystical means.
In Western Africa, a zombie was a dead person revived by a bokor, or a Vodou priest. Since the zombie doesn’t have a will of its own, the bokor would have complete control over the undead creature. In South Africa, it is believed that a dead person can be turned into a zombie by a small child or a witch. There are tales of trains controlled by a witch and staffed by zombie workers who would abduct a person boarding at night. The unfortunate person would either be turned into a zombie worker or beaten and thrown from the train.
Although the term zombie originates from Africa, the thought of flesh-hungry undead has been around since the Ancient Greeks. The Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem that is around 4163 years old, is proof enough of this. In the poem, the goddess of Ishtar promises:
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!
Today’s fictional zombies really live up to that promise. Thanks to George Romero’s movies, the modern zombie began as a slow-walking, stiff-gaited corpse that hungers for the flesh of the living and then grew to be a brain-hungry result of a mutagenic gas. Later zombie movies, such as House of the Dead, allowed the zombies to have a degree of intelligence. They grew more agile, vicious, and were stronger than Romero’s original zombies. Zombies became the result of brain bugs, out-of-control viruses, and mind-altering pathogens. Video games such as Left 4 Dead created unique zombies that had special abilities, such as extremely long tongues or being able to cling to walls.
However, one cannot talk about zombies without talking about their companion concept: the zombie apocalypse. The zombie apocalypse is the breakdown of society as a result of an initial zombie outbreak that spreads like wildfire through Earth’s population. Widespread panic and the slow reaction of government forces allow the zombie numbers to keep growing until the walking dead become unstoppable. Usually, stories involving the zombie apocalypse focus on a small group of survivors and their struggles to live in a zombie-dominated world.
The first two things you need to know about mummies are: 1) that they have always been around, and 2) that mummies can be made unintentionally or intentionally. Unintentional mummies are made when corpses fall and sink to the bottom of bogs or get frozen in ice. The Ancient Egyptians, on the other hand, were very skilled at making intentional mummies and would often mummify their rulers or beloved pets. Even today, there is a company in the United States that would mummify you, for a price. Although mummies have been around since creatures began walking the Earth, mummies in Halloween are a relatively recent addition.
For a long time, humans have been fascinated by the Ancient Egyptians, but this fascination reached new heights during the Victorian era when Napoleon Bonaparte brought back the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is a chunk of granodiorite inscribed with a decree written three times in three different languages: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic scripts, and Ancient Greek. The Rosetta Stone was the key that unlocked the puzzle of the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and allowed the writing to be read.
Now that the mysteries of the Ancients could be read right off the walls of temples, people flocked to Egypt to begin their discoveries.
For most of the Victorian era, mummies were entertaining, a curiosity, and not dangerous whatsoever. It wasn’t until 1821 when a book called The Mummy was published that anyone even thought that mummy tombs might be cursed. In 1869, another book came out about a curse of a mummy’s tomb called Lost in A Pyramid: The Mummy’s Curse. However, in both of these books, there is no lumbering, murderous mummy that we know today.
The idea of a mummy’s curse finally caught on in 1923, when King Tut’s tomb was opened. Two weeks after Howard Carter, the excavator, stepped inside, Mr. Carter’s sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, died. Lord Carnavon’s death wasn’t that mysterious—he died from blood poisoning from an infected mosquito bite—but it spurred the belief that mummy’s tombs could be cursed. Of course, then Hollywood picked up the story, and away she went. In 1932, Universal Pictures released “The Mummy,” bringing in the first appearance of the lumbering, murderous creature.
Today’s Halloween costumes portray a tall, lumbering figure, arms outstretched, and all bandaged up. Pure Hollywood. In reality, a mummy’s arms and legs are tightly bound together, and none so far have risen from their eternal rest.
Did you know that pumpkins also come in white, blue and green? They make great monster carvings!
What Halloween is complete without seeing at least one person in a Grim Reaper costume? In most Western cultures, the Grim Reaper has become the face of Death. He is seen as a skeletal man wrapped in a dark robe and wielding a scythe. At times, the Grim Reaper is said to cause the victim's death, but mostly the Reaper is nothing more than a guide, serving to sever the last ties between the soul and the body and lead the deceased to the next world. However, Death has existed as a sentient entity since the beginning of history, so it comes as no surprise that other cultures portray Death in different ways.
The Ancient Greeks believed that death was inevitable and, therefore, not evil. Death, otherwise known as the God Thanatos, was depicted on wall carvings as a bearded and winged man escorting the dead to the underworld. In mythological tales, Death was known for being just and gentle.
The Celtics had two different Deaths. In Brenton, Death was Ankou, the spirit of the last person to die in the community. Ankou could appear to be a tall and haggard figure wearing a wide hat on top of long white hair or a skeleton with a revolving head that could see everyone, everywhere. The Ankou spirit drives a deathly wagon or cart with a creaking axle, and the cart's load is a pile of corpses. If you happened to be unfortunate enough to have the Ankou stop in front of your house, it means instant death for all those inside.
The other Celtic Death is from Ireland, and Death is actually a type of species called a Dullahan. A dullahan could be either male or female and is seen as a creature with its head tucked under its arm. The head itself has large eyes and a wide smile that could reach its ears. The dullahan rides black horses or drives a carriage pulled by the dark steeds.
A dullahan would act as the forebearer of Death, stopping at the house of one who was about to die and then calling out the person’s name. Immediately, the person whose name was called would die.
In Poland, Death is known as Smierc Smierc, who appears to be quite similar to the Grim Reaper, except that she is female and wears a white robe instead of a black one.
The Norwegian Death became personified during the Black Plague and is known as Pesta, literally meaning “plague hag.” Pesta is a black-hooded, old woman who would show up in villages carrying either a rake or a broom. If she was seen with a rake, it meant that people would survive the plague, but if she brought her broom, it meant that everyone would die.
In the Baltic, the Lithuanians called Death Giltine and saw her as an ugly, old woman with a long blue nose and a deadly poisonous tongue. But now the Lithuanians have adopted the classic Grim Reaper.
In Hindu Scriptures, the writings tell of a man called Yamaraj (literally lord of Death) who rides a black buffalo and uses a rope lasso to snag and drag a soul back to his home.
Modern East Asian folklore is similar to Irish folklore in that Death is a strange species. The shinigami, as they are known, come close to the Western Grim Reaper in that they are responsible for making sure that a person dies at their appointed time. The shinigami are actually a relatively recent concept. The old Asian folklore spoke of Yánluó, the god of death, also known in Japan as Enma-O, and in Korea as Great King Yámna. Yánluó was often depicted wearing a Chinese judge’s cap and traditional Chinese robes.
According to Halloween superstition, if you want to see a witch, you must put your clothes on inside out and walk backwards.
What’s the most popular candy to give trick-or-treaters? Chocolate candy bars dominate the top of the list.
There are a variety of headless horseman tales, most telling of a headless hunter who rides the woods scaring people or blowing his horn. German folklore tells of the headless horseman, known as the wild huntsman, blowing his horn to warn hunters not to ride the next day because they will meet with an accident. Only in the American version, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, does the headless horseman pose a physical threat.
Have you ever been so afraid of something that, no matter how small it is or how much you know it can’t harm you, you still go out of your way not to get close to it? In extreme cases, these fears are known as phobias. Here is a list of phobias and their meanings for the curious-minded.
| Phobia Name | Type of Fear |
| Achluophobia | Fear of the Dark |
| Alliumphobia | Fear of Garlic |
| Arachnophobia | Fear of Spiders |
| Blennophobia | Fear of Slime |
| Catoptrophobia | Fear of Mirrors in General |
| Ceraunophobia | Fear of Thunder |
| Claustrophobia | Fear of Being in a Small or Confined Space |
| Cleisiophobia | Fear of Being Locked IN |
| Coimetrophobia | Fear of Cemeteries |
| Cucurbitphobia | Fear of Pumpkins |
| Demophobia | Fear of Demons or Evil Spirits |
| Dromophobia | Fear of Crossing Streets |
| Eisoptrophobia | Fear of Seeing Yourself in a Mirror |
| Gatophobia, Ailurophobia, or Elurophobia | Fear of Cats |
| Hemotophobia | Fear of Blood |
| Melanophobia | Fear of the Colour Black |
| Nebulaphobia or Homichlophobia | Fear of Fog |
| Necrophobia | Fear of Corpses or Dead People |
| Nyktosophobia | Fear of the Dark or Night |
| Panophobia or Pantophobia | Fear of Everything |
| Paphophobia | Fear of Graves |
| Phasmophobia | Fear of Ghosts |
| Pneumatiphobia | Fear of Spirits |
| Porphyrophobia | Fear of the Colour Purple |
| Samhainophobia | Fear of Halloween |
| Sciaphobia | Fear of Shadows |
| Selenophobia | Fear of the Moon |
| Taphephobia | Fear of Being Buried Alive |
| Thanatophobia or Thantophobia | Fear of Death or Dying |
| Toxiphobia | Fear of Poison |
Discover fun games, an easy to use card creator, and more!
http://www.thekidzpage.com/halloween_games/
This website has interactive colouring pages, puzzles, and games.
http://funschool.kaboose.com/fun-blaster/halloween/
Funny Halloween jokes, pumpkin art, hot science, and Halloween treats all wrapped up in one link.
http://www.primarygames.com/holidays/halloween/games.php
Go monster hunting with Scooby Doo, race zombie karts, or dress up a magical fairy on this fun site.
http://www.bristolvaschools.org/mwarren/halloween_sites_for_kids.htm
Explore this flashy site to find Halloween desktop themes, the Black Cat card game, and instructions on how to make a Halloween rap.
“Halloween.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Dec. 14, 2012. Dec. 26, 2012.
“Frankenstein.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Jan. 02, 2013. Dec. 28, 2012.
“Ghost.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Jan. 02, 2013. Dec. 28, 2012.
“Zombie.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Jan. 02, 2013. Dec. 23, 2012.
“Witchcraft.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Jan. 02, 2013. Dec. 27, 2012.
Once you have finished this challenge kit, use code ECK021 for 20% off the Chills & Thrills Badge!
As a third-generation Scouter, Pauline is a writer passionate about giving back to the Guiding and Scouting programs. She grew up making beaver buggies with the boys, selling popcorn as a Cub and practicing outdoor skills with the Scouts. Instead of moving on to Ventures, she became an assistant leader for Cubs, also known as a Kim. Pauline is proud to pass on her Scouting knowledge to an international audience.
