Halloween continues to get bigger and better each year in the UK, with households dressing up their homes and carving pumpkins in the run up to the holiday.
The spooky event was originally celebrated in the US, with an estimated 65% of Americans marking Halloween each year.
For children, Halloween is an opportunity to stuff their faces with sweet treats during trick or treating, while for some adults, it is a perfect excuse to party.
However, it hasn't always been about garish ghosts and spooky skeletons as Halloween is based on a very old tradition that stretches back over nearly a couple of millennium.
Here's everything you need to know about the origins of Halloween.
Why do we celebrate Halloween?
Halloween as we know it was originally a Celtic festival called Samhain.
The event belonged to those who occupied the region of Ireland and some parts of what is now Great Britain.
Falling around November 1, Samhain marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter.
During the festival, Celts would build bonfires to commemorate the change in season, as well as telling each other stories, wearing costumes with animal parts on and sacrificing animals.
Eventually, the tradition combined itself with that of the invading forces in the form of the Romans.
The Roman festivals of Pomona and Feralia celebrated the dead and the goddess of trees and fruit respectively.
The symbol for Pomona is an apple - and people see this as the reason "bobbing apples" became a tradition associated with Halloween.
Christianity then designated November 1 as All Saints' Day and the following day All Souls’ Day.
Due to this, October 31 became 'All Saints Eve' and then 'All Hallows Eve' before the holiday transformed into Halloween. Eventually, the tradition moved on to the US, when Irish and British migrants moved across the Atlantic.
As traditions developed, people began sharing stories of the dead, which soon turned into ghost stories and misbehaving.
Costumes then became the norm and eventually aligned with cultural references of the time. Eventually, the event became a secular tradition.
Why do people dress up on Halloween?
Originally, people dressed up on Halloween to scare off the dead.
The tradition was adopted by pagans in the community during Samhain to scare off evil spirits and what started out as animal skins and heads has turned into something a little less gruesome in the modern age.
It was hoped that wandering spirits seeing people in their weird disguises would assume they were also spirits - and let them go free.
Why do we carve pumpkins on Halloween?
Pumpkins haven't always been the vegetable of choice when it comes carving Jack O'Lanterns.
The tradition was originally done with turnips.
When Irish migrants took the idea of the Jack O'Lantern to America, they started using pumpkins because they were cheaper than turnips.
The legend of Stingy Jack inspired the carving.
He trapped the Devil, only letting him go on the condition that Jack would never go to Hell.
However, when he died, Jack learned that Heaven was out of bounds due to his devilish dealings, so he was condemned to wander the earth as a ghost for all eternity.
Jack was gifted a lump of burning coal by the Devil and he carried it round in a carved-out turnip to light his way.
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