Spooooooky Season

(Play with the font to make Spooooky look, well, spooky!)

BY THE NUMBERS

By The Numbers, a look at what’s in the news . . . by the numbers. These are just numbers, not suggestions that they mean more or less than what they are. We do not suggest that one number is connected to another. These are simply facts with no extraneous details, bias or slanted reporting. To borrow (and perhaps mangle a bit) a quote from legendary fictional detective Joe Friday, it’s just the numbers, ma’am!

It’s Halloween season . . . and yes, that’s stating the obvious. After all, the stores have had Halloween items on display for more than two months! (One reader reported the first sighting of a Halloween retail display in July!) Actually, it’s getting harder to find the Halloween stuff because all the Christmas stuff is crowding it out . . .

Regardless of how retailers are displaying things, Halloween has historically been a fun, whimsical time when the little ones got loads of candy and Mom and Dad might get to watch a scary movie or two.

So with just a few days to go, please join us as we take a walk down Halloween Lane . . . By The Numbers!

10-20-1882

Bela Ferenc Dezso Blask was born on this date in Lugos, Kingdom of Hungary.  Most of us wouldn’t recognize him by that name. We are much more familiar with his stage name, Bela Lugosi – the actor who so famously portrayed Count Dracula in the classic film of the same name in 1931.

Lugosi actually made his career in horror films. He was in at least 20 horror movies by our count, including the other famous movie monster of the day, Frankenstein (he played Ygor in Son of Frankenstein in 1939).

$3.5 billion

Yup, you guessed it. That’s how much money we Americans are projected to spend on Halloween CANDY. No, not costumes and house decorations. Just candy!

600,000,000

So how much candy does $3.5 billion buy? Around 600 million pounds!

$131

That’s the average amount of money most Americans spent last year on Halloween decorations. That was a big increase from the $87 average the year before that. (But look around . . . a LOT OF HOUSES spend way more than that!)

$108.24

That’s the average amount spent on a Halloween costume.

29 cents

That was the price of those cheap plastic Halloween masks sold in stores back in the 1960s. Remember those?

3

There are three countries that probably celebrate Halloween the most, the U.S., Canada and Great Britain. Kind of figures.

2,000

Halloween has been observed in one form or another for more than 2,000 years, dating back to the Celtic festival of Samhain – which marked the end of summer and the beginning of harvest. Most of us are more familiar with All Saints Day (Nov. 1) and All Souls Day (Nov. 2).

42-59

That’s the average low and high temperatures in Indiana on Oct. 31. Although it’s too soon to say for sure, it APPEARS we might be a bit above that this year!