Halloween wasn't really a thing growing up in New Zealand over 40 years ago, but it seems to have taken off in the last few decades. No trick or treaters have been determined enough to find their way to the top of the hill where I live, and I've now stopped buying lollies to save our waistlines at home. If we do ever get one, we'll need to think of a really good trick - or worse, give them fruit.
In an occasional feature we look back at issues from the early days of NZ Skeptic.
Juan Perez may not be one of the most well known Great Skeptics of History, but he was one of the bravest. Hilary Evans tells his story in "Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors". Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Perez, a Madrid workman, was arraigned by the Inquisition for denying that there existed a Devil with power to seize the human soul. He admitted this sin and explained why: