A Hallowe’en Adventure by Effie Louise Koogle

Howdy all! Happy Halloween! Welcome back to Unknown Playwrights. This Halloween (just like last Halloween) we’re bringing you a Halloween play from the era of when tricks were given more than treats.

Screen Shot 2019-10-30 at 11.30.55 AM — From 1905. Honestly, thisis probably more interesting than our play. Apparently “hold-up” is a game. And two of the boys were dressed as girls. And one kid shot the other. All here.

Screen Shot 2019-10-30 at 11.37.33 AM — Also 1905. In Salt Lake City.

Screen Shot 2019-10-30 at 11.40.39 AM — 1906. Dude literally scared someone to death.

They also had cooler postcards, too.

Let’s see what we’re up against today.

Fair enough. I’ve done a lot of looking online and I can’t find a whole lot about the author. She was born in 1869 and died in 1947. She seems to have spent her whole life in Ohio. She had six brothers and sisters. The most interesting thing to me is that amongst 5 girls in the family only one seems to have married. And among all the sibllings, it seems only one or two married. I wish I knew what that was about. Even the Brontë sisters got married. More on Koogle later. Let’s meet our cast.

Tarrytown…yes, that Tarrytown. Let’s check out the scenes:

Poor Nell has been stuck in her room for a week. She’s been grounded – apparently seminaries could ground their female students back in 1906. She was grounded for a “prank” and she’s got three days left on her sentence. Her friends Verda, Bess, Gloria, Gail, Freida & Gwendolin show up. Nell has been “ill” with a headache. She tells them not to worry…

Don’t worry or them wrinkles will get you! Also, it’s wrong to be hypocritical and hypercritical.

The girls decide they should do something spooky for Halloween, but Bess sees a problem.

She has a point. I love that the boys they’re after are seminary boys.

Nell suggests they go to…Sleepy Hollow.

Bess reminds us of who lives in Sleepy Hollow.

And boys…

These guys seem cool.

Take note: Fictional male characters in 1906 Halloween plays want a woman as handsome as she is venturesome.

Miss Noesome’s seminary gals are the finest! And Glo Gould is a whole sugarplum!

174894 — Pictured: Glo among her cohorts.

In what appears to be the prelude to a hazing ritual, the “ghosts” show up to obey their ghost master.

Moans, groans and hisses…

More hazing. Nell is then asked her name.

I like how the description of the ghost sounds devolve to “Moans, etc. (Emphatic)”

Time to tie up the girls (and Tom)! The boys/ghosts take them to the cave.

Did she say beautiful cave? I know the most beautiful cave in the world.

And hot damn! Napoleon shows up and so does Rip Van Winkle.

Napoleon_I_of_France_by_Andrea_Appiani-59d944780d327a00114119f6 — This dork…

rip-van-winkle-42 — …meets this dork. Sadly, they don’t have a baby.

And amongst the ghosts of fictional and real-life people, a goddamned German doctor shows up. Because. Because? Oh, he wants their blood!

“Vat iss dies sch*t? Vat die aktuelle fock?”

And Major André shows up.

Major_John_André01 — Sometimes dying for your country looks like this.

“Young folks laugh” = play was written by an old person. And that other inhabitant of Sleepy Hollow pops up.

200 — Pictured: Sleepy Hollow’s most ballinist player: Ichabod Crane.

Among the ghosts, the Headless Horseman is a loser. Hehe.

And for some reason a Native American female shows up. Maybe she’s a ghost because of all the Native Americans white Americans killed.

And I know “squaw” is an offensive term that isn’t even found in any Native American language. But it’s found in this sad little play.

Eventually, the girls get scared and go back to their seminary.

I was right about the hazing, which has killed a ton of people over the years.

“IT WAS WORTH WHILE TO CLASH WITS WITH GIRLS OF THEIR CALIBER!”

This has several tropes in common with last year’s Halloween play.

Boys dressing up like ghosts to scare girls. No gun in this one and no cross-dressing.
Girls going to a “haunted” place wanting to be scared.
No actual supernatural stuff.

Apparently, this was really performed at one time. The Koreshan Unity utopian community in Estero, Florida had a copy of this play in its papers.

I want to thank the folks at the state archives of Florida for scanning this play for me. So very, very kind of them.

Ms. Koogle was rather prolific in the early 1900s. Her output includes plays and sheet music.