Halloween Mischief Causes Chaos in North Yakima
A night of Hallowe'en pranks spiraled into dangerous territory, leaving residents missing carriage wheels and a local man injured after a run-in with a wire trap.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Hallowe'en has come and gone, and it is probably a good thing that it comes no oftener, for it nearly disjointed the town. Some very respectable members of the 'spooks' contented themselves with serenades; but others played mad pranks that might have been serious in their results. Judge Reavis had his phaeton out to go to the late train, but sickness in his family kept him at home, and fortunate for him, perhaps, it was so, for some of the mischievous spirits had removed the burs from the wheels of his phaeton, and he might have had a runaway, or at least received a fall. A big brush heap in the east part of town was fired about 1 o’clock, and the clanging of the fire bell called out the department. As Richard Strobach was tugging at the hose cart rope, opposite the syndicate building, he encountered a wire strung across the street which caught him in such a way that he made a double summersault before he landed. The wheels and pins were taken from Lombard & Horsley’s truck. It took these gentlemen half of the following day to locate the wheels, packed away in an old crate, and the pins hidden in the hay in the loft of their barn. The people’s party headquarters’ banner was taken down from its usual hanging place, and made to do duty on a disreputable house in the lower part of the city. John Reed awoke the next morning to find his buggy operating as a cupola for the highest lumber pile on the west side of the track. These instances illustrate the terrors of the uncanny night and the challenges faced by the police force.
“Some very respectable members of the 'spooks' contented themselves with serenades; but others played mad pranks that might have been serious in their results.”
While modern Hallowe'en has largely retreated to private property and organized events, the 'pranks' described here—often involving disabling vehicles and vandalism—show that the holiday has historically been a flashpoint for anti-social behavior and localized civic disruption.
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