Apple bobbing was a popular activity a few decades later in 1914 at a massive Halloween party in Kansas arranged by Elizabeth Krebs. Tired of seeing her garden destroyed by young people celebrating Halloween each year -- since it was often common for pranksters to wreak havoc on people's property at that time -- Krebs helped pioneer parades and costume contests in an effort to provide less destructive outlets for marking the holiday. In another apple tradition, young women would peel apples and throw the peels over their shoulders in hopes that the peels would form the pattern of their future husband's initials. Americans would also occasionally get together on Halloween for Nut Crack Night festivities, in which people ate freshly harvested hazelnuts and chestnuts. In some cases, a young man would assign names to each nut -- the one that burned brightest in a fire could signify his future sweetheart. Another tradition involved a young couple putting two nuts in the fire and seeing if they jumped apart or stayed together, as described in Mary E. Blain's 1912 book "Games for Hallow-e'en."
Halloween candy enters the picture
Candy corn is perhaps one of the oldest Halloween candies still eaten today, dating back to the 1880s. It was first supposedly invented by George Renninger, a candymaker at Philadelphia's Wunderle Candy Company. In 1900, the Goelitz Candy Co. began making it in large quantities. Candy corn was designed to look like chicken feed, since at the time candy corn first emerged, about half of Americans worked on farms.