Tony Eccles (Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter)
Halloween: One Night Many Uses
 This paper will focus on the cultural and economic phenomenon of amateur anomaly research groups and how their participants exploit the time leading up to and the night of Halloween itself for publicity.
The public now has wide access to subject-related information through the use of the internet, television, film and publications. From the late 1970s there was a boom in subject interest and belief and this has been used to create many successful shows such as The X-Files . This huge public and economic interest reached a peak until the time of the Millennium when publication sales and media interest in the subject rapidly decreased.
Due to its associations of mystery and the exotic, Halloween was a perfect opportunity for local organisations to advertise themselves through the media. Book stores would highlight their available stock and organise public lectures.
In the 1990s, Tony Eccles spent nine years researching phenomena, the subject participants and the media working with the Merseyside Anomalies Research Association. As a result of this work he published A Different Sky , which clearly illustrates how both the subject matter and the general public have a major role to play in the subject economy.
The subject matter clearly belongs to the Twentieth Century as a significant cultural phenomenon as interview questionnaires and investigation publications have become historic documents in their own right.
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Updated:
2 October, 2006
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