Another story about Halloween traditions, this one a bit less savory than bonfires and fortune-telling games.
As recently as the late 1980s, Halloween Eve in Detroit was marked with random vandalism and arson. And not a little bit. Young people would set hundreds of fires around the city, in vacant lots and in abandoned cars. The locals called it Devil’s Night.
Previously called Mischief Night, the night before Halloween was a time for pranks or taboo breaking. While fire-related pranks in Detroit dated to the 1910s, they got serious during the Great Depression, but remained relatively harmless. Fast forward to the 1980s, and Devil’s Night became more serious. Detroit was in the midst of an economic decline, resulting in a large number of abandoned buildings.
Year after year, the number of buildings targeted for arson grew. While the city might experience 50-60 reported fires in a 24-hour period, by 1983, 553 fires were reported during the three days around Halloween. In 1984, Devil’s Night saw a record 810 fires. While some of the blazes were pranks, some were arson and others were insurance scams. The city soon began drawing “fire buffs”, people who liked watching fires. Not exactly the stuff of a tourist brochure.
By 1985, the city had enough. Mayor Coleman Young activated some 8,000 police officers, firefighters, and city workers to patrol the streets looking for signs of trouble. The No More Devil’s Night campaign also instituted a curfew for anyone under 17 years old. More than 11,000 additional volunteers patrolled the streets to identify and report potential firebugs. Fire reports fell by half that year. In 1986, volunteerism increased and the number of fires again dropped. By 1988, only 104 fires were reported on Devil’s Night and the practice largely vanished by 2000.
That sounds like a great backdrop for a story. Who is setting the fires and why? Who has come to watch? What else is being raised on Devil’s Night? What happens next?
