Mischief Night, apparently, is a Jersey thing. Here's how this mayhem started.

NJ.com Advanced Media ^ | October 29, 2018

[SMGFan]

Toilet paper and rainbows of silly string dangling from trees, soap smeared on car windows and overflowing foam fountains. Eggshell shards scattered across yards and driveways with with gooey yolks sliding down window panes. Each Halloween in New Jersey, some residents awake to find such sights on their manicured lawns and once-sparkling windows. It's the sign that someone (probably your local teens) had a good time the night before on Mischief Night — which is, apparently, a very Jersey thing.

The night of Oct. 30 has long-proved a prankster's paradise. But in recent years, more and more police departments have set curfews for those under 18, patrolling neighborhoods to make sure no cartons of eggs or rolls of toilet paper go to waste decorating the streets.

[Jack Black]

In Detroit it is called "Devil's Night" and it became a tradition to arson buildings on Devil's night, under the theory that there were be too many fires for the Fire Department to attend to them all, and you had a better chance of successfully burning the building to the ground.

Why would you want to burn a building to the ground?

Well first off Detroit has hundreds of thousands of vacant buildings. Detroit, at its peak had a population of 1.86 million people. Today it has only 713,000 people. That's down almost 1/4 million people since 2000! The death of Detroit isn't over!

So these hundreds of thousands of empty houses, who wants to burn them down? Well criminal owners trying to collect insurance money for a failed investment, neighbors trying to get rid of a crack house or a house full of homeless bums, gangs trying to secure their territory, and of course some thrill seekers.

There is a wikipedia article on Devil's Night and a book on the topic: "Devil's Night" by Ze'ev Chafeis.

click for details

From the 2013 article Detroit Arson A Persistent Problem As City Services Decline from Huff Post.

New Jersey is distinctly second tier when it comes to hosting a proper Devil's Night. Hell, they don't even have the name right.

[lastchance]

I lived in NJ till I was 12 years old. In one county we had Cabbage Night in another there was Goosey Night. Never heard it called Mischief Night in all those years.

[pinkandgreenmom]

I remember mischief night! Grew up in Hunterdon County, NJ in the 80s. My parents (and the rest of our neighborhood) wouldn’t let the kids use eggs or shaving cream since they were a PITA to clean up. We were only allowed to TP the trees.

I tried to explain this phenomenon to my husband, who grew up in a Philadelphia suburb. He never heard of it.

[deweyfrank]

Mischief night was a big thing in Delaware in the 50’s. Twas the night before Halloween. Mostly little pranks like ringing doorbells and running away and marking windows with soap. Some kids did stuff like lighting dog poo on fire in front of a house, ring the doorbell, and hope the owner came out to stomp it out. Don’t see it much here anymore.

[conductor john]

For several years, back in the 70’s, rascal farmers would haul a manure spreader into town and drop it at the courthouse steps. The cops never caught them- it was a veiled political statement of sorts.

[4yearlurker]

I remember back in the late 1960s early 1970s growing up in South Jersey Mischief Night was the night before Halloween. As a kid I participated in some shenanigans back then. Just some soaped up windows and random door knocks.

[windowdude]

One step away from the Purge.

[windowdude]

One step away from the Purge.

[VietVet876]

It’s a Pennsylvania thing too and it’s been around a long time. I remember my father and uncles laughing about the time they put a crotchety neighbor’s outhouse on the roof of his barn one cold October 30 night. This would have been in the first decade of the 20th century when lots of the families in the small town I grew up in did not have septic systems. Somewhere I have a five minute 8mm color film reel of my uncles installing indoor plumbing in my grandmother’s house. It must have been from the early 1930’s. And this was just 30 miles west of Center City Philly.

In my hay day in the late ‘50’s early ‘60’s it was cherry bombs in mailboxes and flaming paper bags of dog poop at the front door after ringing the doorbell. I quit all that immediately after getting shot with a double barrel 12 gauge loaded with rock salt from about 30 feet away of a guy’s front door of a nearby farmhouse that George Washington spent a night in coupla hundred years ago.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Every town had it’s Halloween vandalism in the past, usually trash strewn along the streets, and always an outhouse or two in the middle of main st.

One Halloween night the local cop stayed up all night to keep the teens from strewing trash all over town. At 6 AM in the morning he went home to clean streets. By 7 AM, the streets were trashed and an outhouse in the main intersection.

[C19fan]

As a Generation Xer growing in the NYC Metro area we called it Gate Night. This is the first time I have heard the term “Mischief” used. When I was growing a lot more went down besides using toilet paper.

[pgkdan]

I grew up in South Jersey. Mischief Night was a thing...my participation mainly was soaping car windows. Eggs were food and my mother would have killed me if she thought I was throwing food away.

[midnightcat]

I only ever heard of Goosey Night too. in NJ all my life.

[RedwM]

I come from a town of 600 people in the hard coal region. A couple miles west of you. Everybody knew everything about everybody. The night before Halloween was Mischief Night, almost every kid in town was out soapin' windows, throwing corn at passing cars and some of the things you mentioned, it was a community thing, right down to the shotgun loaded with salt.
Halloween we would go back to the people we "harassed" for our Halloween treats. Our standard trick for our treat was "Trick or treat smell my feet, I'm the bum from down the street".

[Boogieman]

In Chicago, the kids treat or treated on Halloween before sundown. After sundown, the teens went out in their neighborhood Halloween crews to raise hell, with eggs, shaving cream, all that stuff, but also usually packing baseball bats and the like as well. Wasn’t uncommon back in the day to have a rumble with the crew from the next neighborhood over if you crossed the busy street that was a dividing line into their turf.

Now all that was how it went in the “good” neighborhoods. In the ghetto, they were probably leaving the bats and eggs at home and just packing guns.

[ConservativeWarrior]

We had mischief night in upstate, ny. But it was controlled.

From 6 pm to 8 pm on the athletic fields of the town park. Eggs, shaving cream, pudding, etc.... Cops proxied access to and from the field, and everyone had a good time without getting too out of control.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Yep, that’s what came to my mind, that October 30th in Detroit is devil’s night. And it became a night to commit arson.

[Getready]

1966...l.a...egg fights between cars...car chases...water balloon fights...water guns with india ink....t.p.....soap in water fountains and dye added...no knives, guns, or real fights...just bunch of young guys pseudofightin’

[lastchance]

I lived in Bergen and Passaic counties. I thought it odd that the name changed when those are right next to each other. Here in Florida they did not have any night before Halloween tradition. I missed it, but now as an adult am glad they don’t. It was one thing to TP trees and soap window another to commit arson.

[lastchance]

What’s left?