Devil’s Night

evil’s Night, October 30, the night before Halloween, is a long-standing tradition in Detroit with incidents occurring as early as the 1930s.  Traditionally, the youths of the city engaged in a single night of petty criminal behavior, usually acts of vandalism such as throwing eggs at homes or pedestrians, scribbling windows with soap bars or stringing trees with toilet paper.

However, in the early 1970s, a dark side emerged and the vandalism escalated to more severe acts…more notably, arson. This primarily took place within the city itself but surrounding suburbs were not entirely immune. The targets were often abandoned homes due to the rapidly declining housing market although some used this night to burn down their buildings for insurance money. These incidents all added greatly to the notoriety of Devil’s Night as a city in flames with 500 to 800 fires on a single night in a typical year.  Devil’s Night was also an integral part of the 1994 film “The Crow“.

After a brutal Devil’s Night in 1994 (!), the city had enough and organized to create Angel’s Night gathering tens of thousands of volunteers to patrol the streets, squelching fires down to 100 to 150.

INTRODUCTION | THE DAMNED DEFINED | DEVIL’S NIGHT