Novices are seen bobbing for apples at one of the yearly Halloween parties at Mount Saint Joseph in this undated archives photo. COURTESY OF ARCHIVES

BY EDWARD WILSON, ARCHIVES

Imagine a quintessential American Halloween party. Do you think of candy, bobbing for apples, orange and black streamers, costumes, ghost stories, candied apples, paper cutouts of skeletons, black cats and bats? You probably think of something akin to the Halloween party in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” Let me add one thing to that list that you probably missed, religious sisters! That’s right, decades before Charlie Brown’s iconic Halloween special, the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph were having Halloween parties rife with all the iconic spooky charm that the holiday brings!

As unexpected as it may be to many, the Mount was a center of Halloween spirit. Each year, there were as many as three Halloween parties taking place on Halloween night at the Mount. The students from the Junior College, the Academy girls, and the sisters each prepared and had their own parties. All were loaded with candy, decorations, games, door prizes and costumes.

Each party was elaborately decorated and thoroughly planned.  In October 1951, the academy’s newspaper reported, “By the light of the harvest moon” the Academy girls were “led by two mysterious creatures who seem to be neither flesh nor fowl” to the recreation hall, which had been transformed into the “hall of horrors.” There they were “greeted by much too friendly ghosts, goblins, and skeletons” where the Halloween party, sponsored by the juniors, commenced.

Likewise, in 1947, the community annals tell us that the postulants and novices decorated the refectory with “orange crepe paper, skeletons, cats, etc.” Here the sisters enjoyed candy, cakes, and chocolate dipped apples. Two postulants dressed as witches and read fortunes with a wand that had strips of paper on it. The sisters would remove a strip of paper and read the prediction that was printed upon it. In 1952, the Academy girls featured two haunted attractions at their party; the “Path of Mystery” and the “Hall of Goblins.” Only the bravest souls dared to traverse them.

Celebration spaces decorated with black and orange streamers, pumpkins, cornstalks, black cats, jack-o-lanterns, grinning skulls and crossbones are mentioned in the records year after year. Costume contests, spooky parades, ghost stories, fortune telling, spooky Halloween skits and plays; all these things and more were staples of the yearly celebrations.

All involved loved the festivities. Commenting on how hard the juniors worked to put the party together, one sophomore, Mary Ray Stum, remarked that she’d “never seen the MSJ girls work so vigorously and diligently before.”

You’d be hard pressed to find a more picturesque Halloween experience than these 1940s and 1950s MSJ Halloween parties. Nameless ghouls leading a parade of costumed party goers beneath the Mount’s famed maple trees as their leaves turn orange and yellow. With the evenings growing cold, the giddy laughter, shrieks of terror and seasonal songs fill the chilly air of the fall night. Many tricks and treats were to be had on Halloween at Mount Saint Joseph.

Edward Wilson is the director of the Diocese of Owensboro’s Archives and the Archives of the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph. Comments and questions may be sent to [email protected].

Originally printed in the October 2026 issue of The Western Kentucky Catholic.