Visions of the Future - Halloween in the VT Folklife Archive, 2024
Spooky Season is upon us! Through our partnership with Local Learning and the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Program we recently discovered a wonderful description of a turn-of-the-century Halloween fortune telling game in the VT Folklife Archive. In 1984, Daisy Turner of Grafton, VT shared an account of her sister, Wilhelmina, using the Magic of Halloween to discover the identity of her true love! In this post, we recount the unearthing of this treasure amidst hours of archival interview tape.
Halloween in Grafton, VT circa 1890, Part One
On November 1,1983 the 100 year old Daisy Turner of Grafton, VT sat down with VT Folklife founder Jane Beck for what would be the 7th of their 44 interviews together. Daisy and Jane’s conversations were always wide-ranging, addressing topics from family history to Daisy’s own experiences across her long life, as well as things like rhymes, songs, and games played in childhood. It being November 1, in response to a question about rhymes learned from her father, Daisy offered the following:
Jane Beck: Can you remember any of those?
Daisy Turner: Of the different rhymes? Yeah, he would tell us the different things and everything has a meaning to it you know. But I don't know that I can remember some of them. But I know like, last night, for instance, we had the idea that on Halloween…
Halloween? Daisy is talking about Halloween? Yes! Halloween—that most spookiest magical time of year! But before we get into Halloween any further, we’ll take a brief detour. Don’t worry–we’ll get back to it soon…
The Seasonal Round
For the past three years Vermont Folklife has been working with our long-time partner Local Learning on Teaching with Folk Sources, a project supported by the Teaching with Primary Sources Program of the Library of Congress that works to bring the contents of folklife ethnographic archives into conversation with materials at the Library of Congress to create learning resources for classroom use. During the summer and fall of 2024 Andy and Mary worked with Local Learning director Lisa Rathje to assemble materials built around the concept of the “seasonal round” in Vermont—the ways people respond to, and make meaning from, the seasonal changes around them (view the learning resource here!) Folklorists in general, and Andy in particular, have a keen interest in Halloween and the practices surrounding it, so there was never a question of including something about Halloween—provided we could identify it.
As Andy hunted through the Vermont Folklife Archive in search of recordings that touched on key seasonal activities like maple sugaring, town meeting, ice fishing and hay cutting, he also kept a look out for materials related to holidays like Thanksgiving, May Day and, of course, Halloween.
Which brings us back to Daisy and Jane…
Halloween in Grafton, VT circa 1890, Part Two
Grafton school photograph circa 1890. William Turner stands in the back next to the teacher. Wilhelmina sits in the front to the far left. Daisy sits next to her. Image courtesy Grafton Historical Society.
Picking up where we left off…
Daisy Turner: We had the idea that on Halloween that if you went down the cellar stairs backward, place a mirror down at the foot of the stairs and went down backward, when you get down there you will see, turn, you would see the face of the man you was going to marry. Those kind of odd things. And my brother William—that we are trying to get the pension for now—he had, my mother had a big mirror, a very beautiful one, very beautiful. And unbeknown to her he'd taken the mirror from the parlor and had carried it downstairs at the cellar step. Because his twin sister, this Wilhemina, was wondering who she would be dating. And she was only about 14. And so he carried my mother's mirror, my mother would have had a fit if she had known it, down the cellar stairs…
Now, Andy would have been excited to find even a small reference to Halloween among Jane’s interviews with Daisy, but he was absolutely floored to hear this: Daisy describing, in detail, her older brother and sister playing a particular Halloween night fortune telling game—one that evidence suggests was widely known, and likely widely played, in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Mirrors, Stairs and Candles on Halloween Night
Catoptromancy, or divination using a mirror, is a widespread cultural practice with a very long history. Like many such practices formerly grounded in spiritual or supernatural belief, it continues today in the playful activities of children, adolescents and adults. We point those interested in learning more about the ways contemporary play often incorporates various kinds of (formerly) “occult” practices toward folklorist Bill Ellis’s excellent book, Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture. Ellis provides a scholarly overview of a range of such beliefs, rituals and games, and how and why they persist into the present. Furthermore, Ellis is one of the few scholars to write about the particular mirror game described by Daisy and its presence in United States popular culture.
Hover over images below for caption.
1896 political cartoon by George Yost Coffin depicting a woman performing the Halloween husband-diving ritual. The face in the mirror is that of presidential candidate William McKinley, and the cartoon is commenting on the forthcoming presidential election.
Fortune telling games focused on learning the identity of a future spouse—activities Ellis identifies as a “husband-divining ritual”—have been documented in the English-speaking world back to at least 16th century England (Ellis 2004, 176). The specific game described by Daisy involving stairs, a mirror, and Halloween night seems to have become prominent in American popular imagination during the late19th and early 20th centuries, judging by the number of print representations of it from that period. Of particular note are the large number of Halloween postcards from the 1880s -1920s depicting women seeking to learn the identity of their future mates by gazing into a mirror on Halloween night. However, this imagery also made its way into political cartoons from the time. The presence of such imagery in these cartoons suggests just how widespread awareness of the practice must have been since, in order to understand the message being conveyed by the cartoonist, the audience had to be familiar with both the ways the game had been represented in print and the divination game itself.
1904 political cartoon by S.D.Ehrhart depicting Uncle Sam performing the Halloween husband-divining ritual surrounded by several others doing the same—all in an attempt to divine the winner of the forthcoming election. The face in the mirror is presumably Democratic candidate Alton B. Parker. A range of other political figures from the the period are arrayed around this central image engaged in a variety of Halloween diversions.
These days probably the most familiar example of using mirrors in divination play is the game known as “Bloody Mary,” an exercise stereotypically associated with girls’ sleepover parties, and one that serves as a plot device for a slew of B-grade horror movies. Although different from Bloody Mary in many ways, the game described by Daisy is a direct antecedent of it.
As far as the practice of the Halloween husband-divining ritual, at minimum the game seems to require three things: a mirror, darkness and Halloween night. However, as noted above, most representations of the game include other elements—lit candles, stairs, and the act of walking, most often backwards, up or down them. The goal of the game is generally consistent: to learn the identity of a future romantic partner, most often a future spouse. As with most kinds of folklore there is no right or wrong way to do it, just broad variation in how people undertake the practice.
Halloween in Grafton, VT circa 1890, Part Three
So what about the divination game as Daisy described it? Daisy’s account contains four elements: darkness, a mirror, stairs and Halloween. It’s impossible to say for sure why this is. It certainly could be that, over the roughly 90 years between the event and her describing it to Jane, she simply forgot details like the presence of a candle or other light source. It could also be that this was just the way the practice was conveyed to her siblings—as noted above, variation is a defining aspect of folklore.
Let’s take up Daisy’s story once more from the top:
Jane Beck: Can you remember any of those?
Daisy Turner: Of the different rhymes? Yeah, he would tell us the different things and everything has a meaning to it you know. But I don't know that I can remember some of them. But I know like, last night, for instance, We had the idea that on Halloween that if you went down the cellar stairs backward, place a mirror down at the foot of the stairs and went down backward, when you get down there you will see, turn, you would see the face of the man you was going to marry. Those kind of odd things. And my brother William—that we are trying to get the pension from now—he had, my mother had a big mirror, a very beautiful one, very beautiful. And unbeknown to her he'd taken the mirror from the parlor and had carried it downstairs at the cellar step. Because his twin sister, this Wilhemina, was wondering who she would be dating. And she was only about 14. And so he carried my mother's mirror, my mother would have had a fit if she had known it, down the cellar stairs. And then when Wilhemina got down the cellar stairs, he was down there, hid down behind there. He went down the bulkhead way while she went down the steps in the kitchen. And then he showed himself in the picture in the mirror, don't you know. And he had put on a different, you know, fancy __________ and stuff. Oh, he was awful bad, my brother William was. It was really funny. He was always up to something.
The conclusion? William pulled a fast one on his twin sister, a practical joke Daisy still found funny 90 years later. William’s trick makes the point that participating in this ritual was not seen as a serious act of divination, but rather play, a game—an admittedly spooky and perhaps somewhat transgressive game—but all that was certainly part of the fun. William was also participating in another long-standing New England Halloween tradition: pranks. In many communities during this period Halloween was a time where young people were given certain latitude to break established social rules, to be mischievous and at times unruly–something that still persists to at least a minor degree today. In late the 19th and early 20th centuries in Vermont this behavior often took the form of sometimes elaborate pranks, like disassembling someone’s wagon and then reassembling on a rooftop, rattling windows to frighten occupants and abducting livestock and then leaving them inside a schoolhouse.
In her interview with Jane, Daisy moves on from this topic immediately, so we never learn how Wilhemina reacted to her brother’s ruse, how they snuck the mirror back upstairs and all the little details of the event. However, we do have a short but rich account of three of the Turner children participating in a seasonal folkloric practice—-an account that, in addition to its wonderful details, both demonstrates the wide dissemination of this activity and provides insight into ways the small town of Grafton, VT was, even then, connected to a wider world.
Learn more about Daisy and the Turner Family
Visit in Person:
Fall is a terrific time to visit Grafton, Vermont. When you’re in town, be sure to stop by the Grafton Historical Society and the Turner Hill Interpretive Center. From the Interpretive Center you can get directions to the Turner Family Homestead site—also known as Turner Hill and Journey’s End—just outside Grafton village. The Homestead includes interpretive signs and the restored Birchdale Camp, the only remaining structure on the site.
Media:
Online media resources about Daisy and her family include Vermont Folklife’s Peabody Award winning audio documentary, Journey’s End: The Memories and Traditions of Daisy Turner and her Family and the video On My Own: The Traditions of Daisy Turner and Her Family. The Brattleboro Words Trail has produced an audio piece on Daisy as a part of their Regional Words Trail program. Working with the Brattleboro Words Trail, artist and writer Shanta Lee Gander produced several audio pieces for the Vermont African American Heritage Trail, including two about Daisy and her family, A Living Breathing Archive and Journey’s End: The Turner Family Homestead.
Books:
Jane Beck’s 2015 book, Daisy Turner’s Kin: An American Family Saga remains the definitive work on Daisy and her family. In 2021 Vermont Folklife published the graphic history Turner Family Stories: From Enslavement in Virginia to Freedom in Vermont. Also check out our two picture books, Daisy and the Doll and Alec’s Primer.
Acknowledgement
Tremendous thanks to folklorist Bill Ellis, who generously answered questions and provided his insight and assistance.
References
Ellis, Bill 2004. Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky
Turner, Daisy. 1983. Interview with Jane C. Beck. Vermont Folklife Archive Turner Family Collection (VFC1983-0001), November 1,1983 (TC1983-0029).