Strange spooks and ghastly ghouls are often seen creeping around at this time of year.

But, have you ever wondered where the odd traditions lurking around Halloween came from in the first place?

Worry no more - News Shopper have unearthed 13 facts to take the confusion out of the scariest time of the year...

1. The word the word Halloween actually comes from a shortening of the words All Hallows’ Evening.

2. Some people have claimed that Halloween is more Irish than St Patrick's Day as the day originated from Ireland’s Celtic festival known as Samhain which celebrates the end of the harvest season. The tradition travelled to other parts of the world after the Irish immigrated due to the potato famine.

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3. Bats also come from the Samhain festival as the Irish would often light bonfires to ward off evil spirits, and it is thought that they would attract insects to the area which in turn attracted bats causing them to be associated with Halloween - so perhaps the poor creatures are not spooky after all, just peckish.

4. Halloween falls on October 31 as it was believed that the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead were thinnest on this date, allowing the dead to walk the earth. To avoid being recognised as humans, people began wearing masks and costumes.

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5. Children often go out to ‘Trick or Treat’ on Halloween. The tradition evolved from the above superstition, and the ‘trick’ part is when they would play a trick on those who didn’t give a treat when asked.

6. Originally, you had to dance for your "treat." Experts trace trick-or-treating to the European practice of "mumming," or "guysing," in which costume-wearing participants would go door-to-door performing choreographed dances, songs and plays in exchange for treats.

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7. Carving pumpkins into Jack-o'-lanterns actually comes from an ominous Celtic folklore. A drunken farmer named Jack tricked the devil but paid the price when both heaven and hell wouldn’t accept him. Stuck in limbo, Jack made a lantern from a turnip and a burning lump of coal that the devil had tossed him from hell to guide his lost soul. So Celts placed Jack-o'-lanterns with frightening faces outside to scare evil spirits away.

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8. In a few American towns, Halloween was originally referred to as "Cabbage Night." 

This came from a Scottish fortune-telling game, where girls used cabbage stumps to predict information about their future husbands. In the early Framingham, Massachusetts, teens skipped the fortune-telling and simply went around throwing cabbage at their neighbors' houses,

9. The superstition of a witch's broomstick comes from the fact that elderly women who were accused of witchcraft were often poor and could not afford horses. So they walked on foot with the help of walking sticks, which were often substituted by a common broom.

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10. Some animal shelters won't allow the adoption of black cats around Halloween for fear they'll be sacrificed.

It's unclear whether black cats are actually sacrificed around Halloween, but various animal shelters in America refuse to let people adopt these cats in the lead-up to festivities.

11. Because the movie Halloween, made in 1978, was made on such a tight budget, producers had to use the cheapest mask they could find for the character Michael Meyers, which turned out to be a William Shatner Star Trek mask.

Shatner initially didn’t know the mask was in his likeness, but when he found out years later, he said he was honored.

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12. American Tim Mathison holds the world record for the biggest pumpkin. On October 11 2013 Tim entered his now world record holding 203lb pumpkin into the Uesugi Farms Pumpkin Park Weigh-off at Morgan Hill, California. 

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Tim Mathison with his giant pumpkin

13. Magician Harry Houdini died on Halloween 1926 as a result of appendicitis brought on by three stomach punches