There are several variety of games associated traditionally with Halloween parties. The most common and well liked is dooking or bobbing for apples; in this game apples float in the tub or a large basin of water, the people who are participating need to their teeth to remove an apple from the basin. Another variant involves kneeling on to a chair, holding a fork between the teeth and trying to drop the fork on to an apple. Another very common game carries hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings; these should be eaten without using any hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity that inevitably rule to a very sticky face.
Some of the games played traditionally at Halloween are types of divination. In Puicini (otherwise pronounced as “poocheeny”), it is a game played in Ireland, a blindfolded person is seated in from of a table on that different saucers are placed. The saucers are then shuffled and the seated person chooses one by touch. The outcomes of the saucer decide the person’s life for the following year. It is believed that a saucer containing earth means someone known to the player would be dying during the next year, if in case a saucer contains water it predicts emigration, a ring means marriage, a set of Rosary beads states that person would take Holy Orders (becoming a nun or a priest), if one gets coin that means new wealth, a bean states poverty and it goes on.
During 19-century Ireland, young girl placed slugs in saucers scattered with flour, the wriggling of the slugs and the varieties consequently left behind on the saucers were believed to portray the faces of that girls future spouses. An Irish and Scottish type of divining one’s future spouse is to engrave an apple in one long strip, and then toss the peel over one’s shoulder. The peel is to be believed to land in the figure of the first letter of the future spouse’s name. This tradition has also lived among Irish and Scottish immigrants in the rural United States.
Telling the ghost stories and viewing of horror films are few other common fixtures of Halloween parties. Television specials with a Halloween theme, normally aimed at children, those are commonly aired on or before the holiday while new horror films are often released theatrically before the vacation to take advantage of the atmosphere. Visiting a haunted house or a dark attraction are other traditions of Halloween parties. One of the biggest Halloween attractions in U.S.A is Knott’s Scary Farm in California, which features re-themed fun park rides and a dozen different walkthrough mazes, with hundreds of costumed roving performers.
