Devil's Night
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This article is about the Michigan cultural phenomenon. For the album by rap group D12, please see Devil's Night (album).
Devil's Night is one name associated with October 30, the night before Halloween, particularly in the metropolitan Detroit area in the United States. Traditionally, kids and teens in the Metro Detroit area played pranks on their neighbors, in the suburbs this largely consisted of ringing doorbells and running away, soaping windows and decorating trees with toilet paper, occasionally including throwing eggs at houses. Within the city of Detroit the mischief extended into hundreds of acts of arson peaking in the mid 1980s, with more than 800 fires set in 1984, and 500-800 fires in the 3 days before Halloween in typical years.
In 1995, Detroit city officials organized and created Angel's Night on and around October 30. Each year, as many as 40,000 volunteers are gathered to patrol neighborhoods and prevent crime. Additionally youth curfews of as early as 6 pm are instituted on the days preceding Halloween. This has resulted in a decline to 50-60 fires per day in the days around Halloween.
Devil's Night was fictionalized in the movie The Crow. The term is rarely used in local news reports, but still well-known by Michigan residents. The news media in Detroit now refers to the night as Angel's Night in an effort to boost the efforts of the volunteers.
The name Devil's Night or Mischief Night is used by various pranksters in the eastern U.S. and Canada, although the acts are far less destructive, criminal or violent. A survey (http://cfprod01.imt.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_110.html) done in the United States graphically shows the comparative popularity of various names for this night around the country:
What do you call the night before Halloween?
a. gate night (0.39%)
b. trick night (0.33%)
c. mischief night (10.84%)
d. cabbage night (1.68%)
e. goosy night (0.37%)
f. devil's night (11.13%)
g. devil's eve (0.78%)
h. I have no word for this (70.38%)
i. other (4.11%)
(10640 respondents)nl:Devil's Night