Anyone here know about Goosey Night? [View all]

[LiberalEsto]

You would be familiar with it if you grew up in or near Passaic County, NJ, like I did.

Goosey Night is the night of October 30, when kids and teens put on dark clothes and go out to soap windows, toilet-paper trees and ring doorbells, then hide.

People in other parts of New Jersey call it Mischief Night, Cabbage Night, Tic Tac Night and some other names I've forgotten. Around Detroit it's called Devil Night, and in Baltimore it used to be called Gate Night (as in, hang someone's gate up in a tree) but I doubt many folks know about it any more. It's virtually unknown in most of the U.S. but I've read that kids do this in the Toronto area in Canada.

The word goosey probably comes from the word guising, which was a form of mumming in disguise several hundred years ago.