Current-day Halloween is widely seen as a night of harmless fun: children in costumes, neighborhood houses glowing with jack-o’-lanterns and bags of candy passed from door to door. But in Cleveland, the holiday has a far rowdier past.

At the turn of the 20th century and persisting into the 1950s, Halloween was a night full of chaos. Poor Scottish and Irish immigrants, who brought old pagan customs that gradually merged with Christian observances like All Hallows’ Eve, saw the night as an opportunity to push the boundaries of societal rules.

“It’s a night when you could put a mask on and you could be somebody other than yourself,” said John Grabowski, a historian at Case Western Reserve University. “And when you did that, you could challenge authority.”

The freedom sometimes turned destr

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