Halloween As a Murder Backdrop, in Fiction and Fact

Halloween is around the corner, and murder mystery authors can't help but be drawn to this celebration of restless dead souls and dark forces in the chill, autumn night. Fictional tales using the holiday setting include the great Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party, in which Hercule Poirot is called on to solve the murder of a 13-year-old girl after she boasted at a Halloween party that she once witnessed a murder. For those who prefer their mysteries a little cozier, there's Susan Wittig Albert's Witches' Bane, her second mystery featuring herb shop owner China Bayles, who must solve a Halloween murder in which her friend, a New Age expert in tarot and astrology, is a prime suspect. For a Western flavor, read Tony Hillerman's The Fallen Man. Newly retired Joe Leaphorn investigates a skeleton discovered on Halloween at one of the holiest of Navajo places and soon realizes the skeleton is that of a missing person from one of his long-unsolved cases. In reality, crime statistics do spike on Halloween. After all, the holiday involves alcohol-infused parties, opening doors to masked people, and vulnerable children approaching strangers to ask for candy--and most of that happens at night. Actual murders that have taken place on Halloween include the sensational death of Martha Moxley (which inspired numerous books and for which Kennedy family scion Michael Skakel was eventually convicted and later released on appeal). Another horror tale that inspired film and TV documentaries is the Halloween rape and torture-murder of 16-year-old Shirley Ledford, which led to the capture of a pair of serial killer ghouls known as the Tool Box Killers. Now I've never liked the holiday's excessively macabre aspects, so some real Halloween crimes that disturb me involve hanging or decapitated bodies left in plain sight and ignored for hours by passersby who assume they are just realistic "decorations." For more real-life Halloween murder mysteries, read http://listverse.com/2015/10/30/10-sinister-halloween-horror-stories-that-really-happened/