By CHRIS AGBOLA
Columnist
The Halloween tradition of scooping out the flesh of a gourd, crudely carving a haunting face into its rind and sticking a candle inside is observed every year. The common name for this is jack-o’-lanterns. How did this tradition commence? Let’s delve into a little history of it.
The original use of the phrase “jack-o’-lantern” can be traced to the British. It was the name given to a night watchman, a man who literally carried a lantern in the 17th century. It also was the nickname for bizarre flickering lights seen at night over wetlands or peat bogs and mistaken for fairies or ghosts.
By the mid- 1800s, a “turnip lantern” had its name changed to jack-o’-lantern. Young boys used the hollowed-out and lit-up gourds to spook people. Irish legend says that the jack-o’-lantern was named after a guy called Stingy Jack. He thought he had tricked the devil, but it was the devil who had his way. He condemned Jack to an eternity of wandering the planet with only an ember of hellfire for light. The tradition was brought by immigrants to North America, where pumpkins were first used for Halloween decorations. The mushroom Omphalotus olearius, which is a poisonous orange fungus is also called jack-o’-lantern.
Here are some spooky words for Halloween:
Nyctophobia: An abnormal fear of darkness. If haunted houses send chills down your spine, you possess nyctophobia
Sepulchral: It refers to anything or pertaining to burial. Many things can be sepulchral: the deep and hollow tone of bells, a cold draft of wind that ruffles your hair.
Berserk: It is a term usually associated with zombies. When a person becomes crazy, deranged, overtaken by a violent destructive frenzy, he or she is said to have gone berserk.
Lycanthrope: A werewolf or alien spirit in the physical form of a bloodthirsty wolf. A psychiatric condition where a person believes he or she is a wolf is called lycanthropy as well.