Vintage Halloween: Mischief-Makers and a friendly Curfew Ghost

Pranksters on Halloween night in 1957 Los Angeles “got off to a late but strousing start” according to the Times, engaging in “streetlight target practice in the south part of Los Angeles to rockthrowing at railroad locomotives in Montebello.”

Culver City goblins were flooding homes by sticking garden hoses inside of mail slots, while amateurs in Norwalk were turning on “countless” firehydrants, filling the streets with water. In the Valley, mailboxes were being dug up and restaked “in convenient locations far from their points of origin.”

But all this, plus eggings of “ding dong victims”, could have been worse if not for a clever plan unhatched by Principal Ruth Armstrong of Rosewood Elementary School, who employed the help of a ghost to guarantee her students wouldn’t be out too late.

“The ghost will visit each classroom and give the secret codeword – Broomstick. The kids can remember that.

“Then, between 8:30 and 9 o’clock on Halloween night, the ghost will telephone one child from each room,” the principal went on. “If the child is home, and he remembers the secret word, he gets a prize the next day.”

The ghost, in human form of Daniel Slater, a teacher, acknowledged that the plan was a good one. “They all make it a point to be home,” he said.

From the Los Angeles Times, Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, 1957.