Halloween has arrived once again.  Tonight, the streets will be filled with vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and a host of scary apparitions barely waste high.  Sure, there will be a few fairy princesses intermingled, but the night really belongs to the monsters and dybbuks who just a few hours earlier looked like the normal, even sweet, children of the neighborhood.

Halloween probably has its roots in ancient Celtic ceremonies marking the end of the good time of the year, and the beginning of the season of darkness and hardship.  There was also an element of a festival for the dead, when ancestors were honored, and evil spirits were warded off.  The end of October has had a scary, morbid element associated with it long before the last day of the month was given the name "Halloweeen."

So yes, October 31 has long associations with otherworldly fears and dread.  But are those fears justified?  Certainly, some intersting, even scary things have happened on this day.  Consider the following:

• In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenburg.  You may not think that is scary, but it began a process in which the very foundation of Western society came under fire, ushering in a new era of theological doubt, and regrettably, bloodshed.  I suspect that once the implications of Luther's actions were understood, a lot of people began to have great fear, fear for their souls, and fear, mixed with hope, for their new, unmapped religious destiny.

• On this date in 1541, Michelangelo completed "The Last Judgement" in the Sistine Chapel.  Has there ever been a scarier depiction of what awaits mankind in the Afterlife?

• In 1846, a group of pioneers hoping to start a new life in California were blocked from crossing the Sierra Nevada by a terrible snow storm.  The leader of the group was named George Donner.  He and his group set up camp on October 31 in the mountain pass that now bears his name.  Of the 33 pioneers that started the journey with Donner, only seven survived the ensuing cold and cannibalism.

• On this day in 1914, Britain declared war on Turkey.  The terrible Battle of Gallipoli commenced not long afterward.

• The last week of October, 1918, should have been a time of hope.  World War I was drawing to a close, and by October 31, it was becoming more and more apparent that the Allies would be victorious.  The hope was muted, however, by the terrible death toll of another enemy, the Spanish Flu virus, which would ultimately kill far more people than the war.  The last half of October marked the peak of the pandemic that killed tens of millions across the globe.

• On this day in 1922, Mussolini became Italy's premier.  He was the first of a series of Fascists who would bring more misery to the world than any ghost or goblin.

• In 1952, true apocalyptic horror was unleashed in the South Pacific, when the first hydrogen bomb was tested in the Marshall Islands.  What will be the end game of that test?

• Just a few years later, a little war was unleashed in the Middle East, when the UK and France bombed Egypt, hoping to force the opening of the Suez Canal.  That hostile act betrayed Western claims of moral superiority, since at roughly the same time, Soviet tanks were storming the streets of Budapest.