A few years ago, I spent a very happy Halloween in Taupo, New Zealand. The charming lakeside town is sadly overlooked by many foreign visitors to the country. Along with stunning natural beauty, the community is surprisingly welcoming to tourists. But what amazed me the most on that visit was the town’s embrace of an American-style Halloween complete with costumed kiddies and trick or treating.

Almost half a century ago, during my first sojourn outside of North America that coincided with Halloween, I found myself in another beautiful lakeside town. That October I was in magical Luzern, Switzerland. However, way back then, none of the locals seemed to know, or care about Halloween and I had to put together a very impromptu holiday themed party.

Anyway, for better or worse, the entire world seems to have embraced Halloween. So have a happy one how ever you celebrate.

Maybe try out this morbid little diversion by playing  seventeenth century death roulette, which delivers the player to their grim fate. Given the state of medical science, the causes listed are vague at times and ring more like curses than disease but provides an engrossing glimpse at historical demographics and record-keeping. Spin at your own peril and probably it is best to remain ignorant of what such terminal ailments like the riſing of the lights (lung disease, using the term for the organ as an ingredient), strangury (the inability to empty one’s bladder despite the urgent need to do so), surfeit (over indulgence), kingſevil (scrofula, an infection of the lymph nodes supposedly cured by the touch of the sovereign), etc. as those were that compiled these list.