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    History quizzes
    1. Home
    2. Halloween

    Halloween

    Find out more about the history of Halloween, from the origins of the celebrations to why we use the term 'trick-or-treat'…

    Glamis Castle is said to be the most-haunted castle in Scotland. (Photo by mpalis via Getty Images)
    Medieval

    A royal ghost tour: 5 haunted sites around Britain

    An illustration of a group of supposed witches
    Tudor

    A very brief history of witches by Suzannah Lipscomb

    Trick photograph. (Photo by LM Melander and Brothers) entitled 'The Haunted Lane,' depicts a pair of men terrified by a female ghost, mid-to-late 19th century. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
    Stuart

    5 historic hauntings for Halloween

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    Halloween postcard
    Medieval

    10 things you didn’t know about the history (and mystery) of Halloween

    Author Kate Summerscale (Photo by Fran Monks)
    20th Century

    A 1930s ghost hunt

    A spider on its web, woodcut, 1547. (Image courtesy of Wellcome Collection)
    Medieval

    A sign of the devil or a miracle cure? How people felt about spiders in the Middle Ages

    Being invited to become a 'guest' of the Tower of London in medieval England meant, more often than not, that you would soon be food for the crows. (Image by Getty Images/RM Creative)
    Tudor

    10 historical haunted sites across Britain

    In 1733, as part of a plot to blow up a Protestant church, a group of Catholics claimed they were being terrorised by a poltergeist… or so the story went. (Illustration by Ben Jones for BBC History Magazine)
    Georgian

    5 Georgian ghost hoaxes

    This 1867 magazine illustration shows a group of children preparing for Halloween. (Photo by American Stock/Getty Images)
    General Early Modern

    The origins of Halloween: tricks, treats and cobbled streets

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    A woman on a medieval ducking stool
    Medieval

    Q&A Q&A: Were ducking stools ever used as punishment for crimes other than witchcraft during the Middle Ages?

    This 16th-century woodcut depicts King James VI at the North Berwick witch trials, the case that first sparked his obsession with hunting. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
    Stuart

    James VI and I: the king who hunted witches

    Helen Duncan, a 20th-century medium and spiritualist, allegedly summoned spirits draped in ‘ectoplasm’ – organic matter emitted from her body. In the 1930s she was denounced as a fraud, and in 1944 prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcra Act, which forbade conjuring spirits. (Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum/University of London)
    20th Century

    Conjuring up the dead: Helen Duncan and her ectoplasm spirits

    A depiction of a witch on a broomstick. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)
    Medieval

    Halloween history quiz: test your knowledge

    A view of the Reculver Towers, Reculver, England. (Photo by Loop Images/UIG via Getty Images)
    Medieval

    8 of Britain’s most mysterious ruins

    A view of a calander showing the date, Friday the 13th. (Photo by William C. Shrout/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
    Medieval

    10 historical superstitions we carry on today

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