"Halloween superstitions and rites: Sprinkle salt on your doorsteps to bar evil spirits from your home. Hang socks that have a hole worn in them in your windows to prevent evil spirits from flying in. Go to a cabbage patch, put on a blindfold, and grab a random cabbage. If the cabbage is fresh and clean your coming year will be fortunate. If the cabbage is spoiled or dirty your coming year will be similarly blighted. Drop two needles in a basin of water. If they come together at the bottom, you will see your future wife or husband. This can also be done by taking a lit candle and a mirror into a dark cellar. The future spouse will appear in the mirror. Sprinkle a pinch of cornmeal by your bed. In the morning you will see that ghosts – most likely mice or bugs – have drawn your future in it. As a party treat and game, bake a coin with a cake, a thimble, a ring, and a China doll in it. When the cake is served, whoever finds the coin will have wealth in the future. Whoever finds a thimble will never marry (Single women once supported themselves sewing or spinning –hence the term spinster). Whoever finds the ring will marry in the coming year. Whoever finds the doll will have many children – hopefully after finding ring on an earlier occasion."