Halloween is a holiday in many English speaking countries that is celebrated on the night of October 31st. Children wear costumes and they go to people’s homes saying “Trick or treat!” to ask for candy and then the people give it to them. People sometimes dress up as ghosts, witches, goblins, and other scary things for Halloween.

The word Halloween is from Hallowe’en. This is a contraction of All Hallow’s Eve. All Hallow’s Eve is the day before the Catholic holiday All Saints’ holy day. All Saints’ holy day was once called All Hallows. This was short for All Hallowed Souls. Hallowed means holy.

This holiday All Saints’ holy day was made by Christian missionaries. It was the same day as a pagan holiday. The missionaries came to areas where pagans lived. They tried to make the pagans believe in Christianity. So they made some pagan holidays into Christian holidays.

The pagan holiday that All Saints’ holy day replaced was the Day of the Dead. Many Wiccans and modern pagans celebrate the Day of the Dead. This is a happy holiday (even though it says ‘Dead’). It is the day that the souls of dead people come back to Earth. So in pagan religions it is not about scary things. It is about being with (remembering) family or friends who have died.

holiday – ünnep
to be celebrated – meg van ünnepelve, megünneplik
costume – jelmez
candy – édesség, csoki, cukor
to dress up as – beöltözni valaminek
ghost – szellem
witch – boszorkány
goblin – gonosz szellem, kobold
scary – félelmetes
contraction – összevonás, rövidítés
holy – szent
missionary – misszionárius, hittérítő
pagan – pogány
to replace – helyettesít
religion –  vallás

Trick or treat!  A kifejezést akkor szokták használni a gyerekek, amikor Halloweenkor házról házra járnak és édességet kérnek a háziaktól, azzal fenyegetve őket, hogy ha nem kapnak, akkor valami varázslatot, trükköt (nem jó értelemben) fognak bevetni ellenük (pl. összeszappanozzák az ablakot, lisztet szórnak a lábtörlőre, stb.)

A szöveg alapján válaszolj a kérdésekre!

1.When is Halloween celebrated?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
2.What do children say in order to get sweets?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
3.What does the word hallowed mean?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
4.Where did the missionaries go and why?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Answers: Halloween is celebrated on the night of October 31st./Children say „Trick or treat!” to ask for candy and then the people give it to them./Hallowed means holy. /The missionaries went to areas where pagans lived to try to make them believe in Christianity.

“Ditto” as a response meant as “same here” or “what you said” has a modern, almost slangy feel to it, so many people assume that it was taken from the copy machine use. The reading is that a ditto machine makes copies, so saying ditto creates a “copy” of something that was just said. But the “what you said” use is centuries older than the machine.

It comes from Italian ditto, a dialect variation on detto, meaning “said,” the past participle of dice, “to say.” It was used in Italian as in “il ditto libro”, “the aforesaid book.” In English, it came to be used in the 17th century to avoid having to repeat words and phrases in accounting and commercial language. Instead of repeating something like January 29 or Newcastle upon Tyne in a list, one could just put ditto in after the first occurrence.

Ditto gradually drifted from a noun meaning “the aforesaid” or “the same” (as in a 1759 cookbook: “Parsley roots, and leaves of ditto”) to an adverb meaning “I agree with what you just said.”

The force of ditto goes beyond mere agreement though. If the Patrick Swayze character in Ghost said “I love you” and Demi Moore said “Agreed” or “I concur,” it would sound like she was agreeing only with the proposition he expressed: that he loved her. Kind of rude. What she means is not just “I agree,” but “I hereby say the same.” Ditto still carries the concept of actual saying with it. It performs an act of saying by merely pointing back to already said words.

source: Mentalfloss

You don’t even need to like pumpkins to get into the spirit of things (although it definitely helps) but there are plenty of options for do-it-yourself Halloween home decor if you think outside the box, even just a little.

So take a look at this list of easy do-it-yourself Halloween home decor ideas, and you just might be able to have some fun.

1. Glowing Eyes

Want to terrify people with some glowing eyes around your apartment? Just take some toilet rolls, cut eye shapes into them, insert a couple of glow sticks and cover the ends. Simple.

2. Fake Pumpkins

If pumpkins are too heavy or you simply don’t like them, then just make your own. Get some foil tubing from a hardware store and a piece of pipe for the stem. Arrange the tubing in a circle and spray orange.

3. Ghost Candles

It doesn’t get any easier than picking up some tall, white candles and drawing ghost faces on them with a sharpie.

4. “The Nightmare before Christmas” Light

Take a cheap touch light. Take your sharpie and draw the face of Jack Skellington from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas.

5. Blood-Dripped Candles

Light a red candle and drip the wax around the edge of a white candle to give the appearance of blood.

6. Garage Door Victim

If you really want to freak people out,stuff some old clothes with straw or paper and leave the top half under your garage door, then splatter the front of the door with ketchup.

7. Cardboard Zombie Window

Cut some cardboard into long pieces and paint a wood grain pattern onto them and attach to doors or windows for that “boarded-up” look. For an added touch, attach plastic skeleton hands or even draw eyeballs on ping pong balls and have them peering through.

8. Eyeball Flowers

Buy some plastic eyeballs or use the ping pong ball trick (cut them in half to mimic eyeballs) and then glue them in place in the center of fake roses. Obviously, the darker the flowers, the better.

9. Watermelon Brain

Peela watermelon so the white part is still visible, put it in a bowl and cut a brain pattern into it. This is great for those who don’t like pumpkins.

10. A Head in a Jar

Take a panoramic photograph of somebody’s head and print it in color, then curl the paper up, put it in a jar and freak everybody out.

11. Another Head in a Jar

If the previous head-in-a-jar trick seemed like too much effort, just take some old doll heads, wrap them in lace or cheesecloth, and put them inside a bell jar.

12. Cheesecloth Ghosts

To make these ghosts just put some type of ball on top of a soda bottle and use some wire to arrange the position of the arms. Drape the cheesecloth over the top and spray with starch. Once they are dry, these will be able to stand up on their own.

13. PVC Mummy

If you have PVC piping, some old clothes and a mask, you too can throw together a pretty awesome mummy.

14. Styrofoam Tombstone

If you have access to an iron, you can make a pretty impressive-looking tombstone. Just draw your design onto a piece ofstyrofoam and then engrave it with the soldering iron in a well-ventilated area. After that, spray it gray and add some extra details, and voila, a realistic-looking tombstone.

Source: littlethings.com

What’s Halloween? Can you fill in the gaps in the text using the words given?

How did Halloween begin? The holiday traces back to the ancient …… (1) festival known as Samhain. The ancient Celts from Britain and Ireland observed the start of the …… (2) on November 1, …… (3). The day marked the end of summer and the …… (4). Folks came to believe that on October 31, the worlds of the living and …… (5) overlapped before the start of the new year. October 31 became All Hallows Eve, a time where the …… (6) of the dead could return to destroy the harvest that was stored for winter. People set …… (7) on hilltops to ward off the ……(8) spirits before the start of the winter season.

Key

1. Celtic

2. new year

3. All Souls’ Day

4. harvest

5. dead

6. ghosts

7. bonfires

8. evil

Located on the banks of the River Thames, the Tower of London is one of Britain’s most visited attractions. It was erected by William the Conqueror in the 11th century, it used to be a political prison and place of execution. With over 400 years of gruesome history of torture, violence, execution and murder it’s no wonder the Tower is considered to be one of Britain’s most haunted places in addition to being its oldest fortress, palace and prison. The first ghost allegedly spotted in the building was Thomas Beckett’s, in the 13th century. 

WHAT YOU CAN EXPERIENCE:

One of the Tower’s most well-known ghosts is that of Anne Boleyn, the famous wife of Henry VIII whom he had beheaded in the Tower in 1536. It is said that the ghost of Lady Jane Grey also is at the castle. People have reported seeing phantom carriages, and dogs are even too afraid to go near the Salt Tower, where royalty used to be held before execution.

TOURIST INFORMATION:

Apart from the ghosts, one of the main reasons to visit the Tower is to see the working collection of Crown Jewels. There are 23,578 in the collection including one of the world’s most famous diamonds. There is so much to see at the Tower, such as the ‘Yeomen of the Guard’, the Ravens, Henry VIII’s armour, instruments of torture in Lower Wakefield Tower and the Traitors Gate, that one day may not be enough to explore it!

Address: 202-203 Grange Road, London SE1 3AA, United Kingdom

Admission fee: children £9.50, adults £ 16.50
web: www.hrp.org.uk/toweroflondon/

Prypiat, Ukraine

On April 26 in 1986 the worst nuclear accident of the history happened when reactor 4 exploded at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Four workers were killed instantly. Steam explosions and fires released about 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere. The nuclear meltdown blew downwind on cities and even into different countries.

The nearby city of Prypiat – founded in 1970 – in Ukraine, was home to the workers of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The city is now one of the world’s most notorious modern ghost towns.

The Chernobyl explosion happened at around one in the morning when most of the 50,000 people in Prypiat were sleeping. 40 hours later, residents were ordered to evacuate. People had to leave their homes so to never return back. Evacuation of the population lasted 3 hours. By then, many of the people had suffered from radiation poisoning.

Prypiat had one hospital, three clinics, 21 schools, three cultural centres, ten gyms, ten shooting galleries, three indoor pools, and one railway station. It also had one recreation park, 35 playgrounds, 25 malls and stores, and 27 cafes. But in a blink, the people of Prypiat disappeared. Prypiat is still mostly abandoned. The area is considered relatively safe today, and several Ukrainian companies even offer tours it is not advocate entering the city.

mine – bánya
abandoned – elhagyatott
desolate – lakatlan, sivár
to strike – lecsapni
instantly – azonnal
core – valaminek a magja/közepe
meltdown – összeomlás
downwind – hátszél, uralkodó széljárás
notorious – hírhedt
to be ordered to – valamire parancsot kapni
to suffer – szenvedni
in a blink – egy szempillantás alatt
to be considered – valamit valaminek tartanak
advocate – javasolt, támogatott

Poveglia Island, Italy

Poveglia Island is one of many island in the lagoons of Venice. This island is not only regarded as one of the most haunted locations on the planet, but also one of the most evil places in the world. Today it is off-limits to visitors and even fishermen steer clear of the island for fear that they will catch human bones in their nets.

The dark history of the island started in 1348, when the Bubonic Plague arrived in Venice and Poveglia became a quarantine colony. Fearing the spread of the disease, Venice exiled many of its symptom-bearing citizens there. At the island’s centre the dead and those too sick to protest were burned on giant pyres. These fires would burn once more in 1630 when the Black Death again swept through the city.

In the late 1800s, the area’s mentally ill resided in an poorly constructed asylum in Poveglia. There are rumours that in the 1930s, a doctor performed strange experiments on the patients here. Eventually, the doctor went mad and threw himself from the asylum’s tall bell tower. Though the bell in the tower was removed decades ago, locals still claim to hear it from the lonely island. By the mid-20th century, the facility was converted into a geriatric centre, which closed in 1975.

Today, the entire island is abandoned. In recent years, Italian construction crews attempted to restore the former hospital building, but abruptly stopped without explanation, leaving locals to speculate that they were driven away by the island’s dark forces.

not only … but also … – nem csak … hanem … is
haunted – szellemjárta
to steer clear (of) – elkerülni valamit
Bubonic Plague – bubópestis
quarantine – karantén
to spread – terjedni
disease – betegség
to exile -száműzni
sympom-bearing – tünethordozó
pyre – (halotti) máglya
mentally ill – szellemileg beteg, elmebeteg
to reside – tartózkodni/lakni valahol
asylum – elmegyógyintézet
rumour – pletyka, szóbeszéd
to perform an experiment on – kísérletet végrehajtani
bell tower – harangtorony
to be removed – eltávolítva lenni
to be converted into – valamivé átalakítva lenni
geriatric centre – gerontológia, elfekvő
to attempt to – kísérletet tenni valamire
to restore – helyreállítani
abruptly – hirtelen
without explanation – magyarázat nélkül

Bodie, California

The US has an abundance of ghost towns, mainly old mining towns that dried up after the gold rush. Here are two of them!

The ghost town of Bodie, California, is one of the most authentic abandoned gold-mining towns of the Old West. It sits not too far from the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It rises out of the sparse landscape and gives a mirage effect. Now owned by the state and made into a historic park, this town has about 170 buildings still standing.

The town was founded in 1859 by W.S. Body, who was making his way with others further into California to mine for gold. What he and others found was the one of the richest gold discoveries the West has ever known, according to the California Parks Department. Eventually the town would produce $32million dollars in gold and around $7million in silver.

Body never got to luxuriate in his discovery as he froze to death his first winter, while out getting supplies. Mining started slow, but in 1875 miners made a huge discover after a cave-in. Mining reached its heyday from 1877 to 1881 as the town’s population grew to a massive 10,000. Sixty saloons and dance halls were built up and the town became known as the most lawless, wildest and toughest mining camp the far west has ever known. 

It was also very dangerous with killings happened in the streets often. But then mining slowed in 1881 and the miners moved on. In 1892 a deadly fire swept the town, destroying many homes and buildings.

The nail in the coffin came in 1932 when a 2-year-old lit a match that started another fire which destroyed all but 5-10 per cent of the town. Bodie was over. 

The town was turned into a State Historic Park in 1962, and tourists can visit the abandoned town year-round.

abundance – bőség
to dry up – kiszáradni, elapadni
gold rush – aranyláz
authentic – eredeti, autentikus
to rise out – kiemelkedni
sparse – gyér
landscape – táj, vidék
mirage effect – délibáb hatású
to freeze to death – halálra fagyni
cave-in – beomlás
heyday – virágkor
lawless – törvény nélküli, törvényen kívüli
nail in the coffin – utolsó szög a koporsóban

Centralia, Pennsylvania

Unlike Bodie, Centralia wasn’t abandoned directly after the Gold Rush. Its ghost town status was caused by an underground mining fire in 1962 that forced its residents to evacuate. The fire is still burning today and experts predict that it could continue to burn for close to 250 years.

Centralia, Pennsylvania, is a virtual ghost town that no longer even exists on some maps. It has essentially been left uninhabitable due to a widespread mine fire that has burned for almost 50 years. It is thought that the downfall of the town began in the 60s when a trash fire was lit in the local landfill, which was located in an abandoned mine pit in the southeast portion of town.  This, it is thought, ignited an exposed vein of coal causing fire to spread throughout the mines beneath the town. For the next two decades workers battled the fire, flushing the mines with water and excavating the burning material time and time again. However, all efforts failed and by the early 1980s the fire had affected around 200 acres.

Despite burning for several decades the fire didn’t receive much wider attention until 12-year-old Todd Domboski fell into a sinkhole four feet wide by 150 feet (46 m) deep that suddenly opened beneath his feet in his backyard. Only the quick work of his cousin Eric Wolfgang saved Todd’s life, as the plume of hot steam billowing from the hole was found to contain a lethal level of carbon monoxide. Meanwhile, the smoke, fumes and toxic gases produced by the fire leaked up through the backyards, basements and streets of Centralia.

In 1984 the U.S. Congress allocated more than $42 million for relocation efforts and most of Centralia’s residents moved to nearby communities. In 1992 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania claimed all of the properties in the borough and condemned them.

Despite this a handful of people remain in the eerily deserted town and are fighting attempts to evict them.

resident – lakos
to predict – előre jelezni, megjósolni
uninhabitable – lakhatatlan
due to – valaminek köszönhető
widespread – széles körű, kiterjed
downfall – hanyatlás
landfill – lerakó
mine pit – bánya akna
to ignite – meggyulladni, lángra kapni
sinkhole – lefolyólyuk, víznyelő
plume – füstfelhő
to billow – hullámozni, hömpölyögni
relocation – áttelepítés
to claim – igényelni
borough – város
to condemn – elítélni, ítélni
eerily – hátborzongatóan

Football spectators have been spooked by a ghostly figure that appears to run through fans during a match in Bolivia. The unexplained shadow glides quickly through the stands during a game in Hernando Siles Stadium in La Paz, Bolivia, on Thursday night. It even appears to run straight through a barrier at speed.

The video, shot during a television broadcast of the match, has gone viral with internet sleuths sharing their theories on the apparition. This is not the first time an unexplained apparition has been spotted at a South American stadium.

Some Venezuelans believe the ‘ghost’ of their deceased President Hugo Chaves was responsible for saving an otherwise certain goal during an international match against Colombia. A figure can be seen tapping the ball over the goal post.

source: www.dailymail.co.uk

spectator – néző (sporteseményen)
to be spooked – megijedni valamitől
spook – szellem
to glide – siklani, suhanni
stand – lelátó
barrier – korlát
to go viral – vírusként terjed
sleuth – kopó (nyomozó)
theory – elmélet
to spot – észrevenni, kiszúrni
deceased – elhunyt
to save a goal – gólt kivédeni
goal post – kapufa
  

Match the words with the definitions.

answers: 1-d 2-e 3-b 4-a 5-c

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Mysterious breakages and shadowy figures at the Carlisle Castle Hotel, Australia, have been captured on CCTV – and staff say weird stuff happens there all the time

Creepy video footage appears to show ghostly figures and bottles of expensive wine flying off shelves in a ‘haunted‘ Australian hotel.

Match the words with the definitions.

answers: 1-c 2-e 3-a 4-b 5-d