Halloween of LDS Past

Posted by on Oct 31, 2012 in Uncategorized |

What are some events that happened in Halloween LDS past? Ezra Taft Benson Halloween brought out the mischief in Ezra. On Halloween he and his friends were known to press their luck to the limit. He and his pals daringly moved outhouses from where they belonged, scared other Whitney children with sheets over their heads, and once left a farmer’s buggy on top of a nearby hill. Ezra seemed to know how to have fun without losing the respect of others. Late one holiday night, he and his friends slipped into the watermelon patch owned by the local sheriff (who was known to be somewhat timid). Hearing noise in the patch, the sheriff shot his revolver into the air. One of the boys, who was carrying a six-shooter, fired back into the air. Immediately the sheriff yelled, “Shoot in the air, boys. That’s what I’m doing.” “That’s about the closest we ever came to any real friction,” Ezra insisted. Henry Ballard (a courageous LDS pioneer): Henry played a different kind of trick on Halloween.  The trick was to get out of town without being detected by the deputies causing anti-Mormon troubles so he could depart on his mission to England.  He writes on Halloween night 1886: …started after Dark going by team to Salt Lake City[.] my son Henry Wm taking his team… We drove all night in the worst storm I have ever seen. Wind was terrible and the rain and hail blinded us until we couldn’t see the road. Thunder shook the earth and the lightning nearly blinded us. Then there was a heavy fall of snow. We had to trust our faithful horses to keep the road. Earlier in the evening officers of the law lined the roads… Father and his companion had shaved off their beards and disguised themselves as foreigners. The storm proved a blessing to us for the roads were now deserted and not a soul molested us. We drove all night to Bountiful without a stop. Here we stopped only long enough to eat breakfast and then drove on to Salt Lake.” James E. Faust Recalling one of his boyhood Halloweens: “One Halloween, as some of the kids in the neighborhood went about tipping over privies, Jim and Newell took some toilet paper and went over to Highland Drive, where they stretched the toilet paper across the street and held it up about three feet high as cars approached. “The idea,” Jim says, “is that they would think there was some kind of barricade and slam on their brakes. The thing I remember about that is we seemed to have to wait about half an hour for a car to come by. Now, I’m sure it wasn’t that long—we were impatient young boys—but it was amazing how little traffic there was back then.” He then adds, “In my own defense, I can’t...

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