SPOOKY: The spooky season is upon us, although if you go by when chain stores started selling Halloween merchandise, we’re in about its fourth month.

We turned to Farmers’ Almanac and Mental Floss to find some superstitions about Oct. 31.

If a candle’s flame turns blue, a ghost is near.

Should a young woman wish to dream of the man who will become her husband, on Halloween night, she must place a silver coin and a sprig of rosemary under her pillow.

Be careful, little mouth, what you say. Speaking during dinner on Halloween night will invite spirits to your dining table.

And what of the jack-o-lantern? The jack-o’-lantern originated in Irish folklore from the legend of “Stingy Jack,” who tricked the Devil and was cursed to roam the earth eternally with only an ember for light. The Irish carved faces into turnips or potatoes to ward off spirits. This tradition came to America with Irish immigrants, who adopted the use of pumpkins because they were larger and easier to carve, leading to the modern pumpkin jack-o’-lantern.

For a less spooky tradition, in some Celtic lands, it was thought that if you eat a large apple under an apple tree at midnight on Halloween wearing only a bedsheet, you would never get a cold. (And likely, in modern times, some funny videos on home security.)

In days of old, some thought that whatever direction a bull was facing while lying down on Halloween was the direction from which the wind would blow for most of the winter.

As late as the 17th century, it was customary for farmers in Scotland and elsewhere to walk around their fields with a lighted torch, singing or chanting a piece of doggerel verse, to protect their fields from harm.