Please, I've already heard that song about eight times today ...

Traditionally it's known as All Hallows Eve, or the eve of All Hallow's day, which was renamed All Saints' Day, though the whole idea of spooks and spirits stems from the festival of Samhain.  You can blame the Irish, primarily, for starting the tradition.  It was believed that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead became somewhat thin on this day, and so it was associated with the dead.  Pretty much the modern tradition of Halloween is what remains of the old Samhain festival and its superstitions.

The modern holiday also has a nasty upstart cousin that usually happens on Oct. 30, and goes under various names.  Some call it Mischief Night, Damage Night, Hell Night (no, not the Doom kind, that starts with a K), or Devil's Night, among other things.  This is primarily a night of vandalizing and causing trouble by older teenage boys or men in their early 20's.  The consumption of alcohol or partaking of drugs often is part of this as well, as drunk or otherwise intoxicated individuals are a bit more likely to engage in the mischief making, though inebriation is not a prerequisite.

Halloween also seems to be associated with a lot of modern revelry of its own sort - drinking of alcohol being the primary component to any form of human revelry it seems, but the theme of ghosts and devils and ghouls of all kind I think appeals to man's darker nature to some degree, or at least, he sees it as another excuse to get together with other humans and get drunk anyway.  I think in addition, it's one of the few times that, barring a career in theater or as a sports team mascot, adults get to play dress-up without looking or feeling like complete buffoons.

In America, Halloween is mostly associated with children dressing up in costume, death-themed or otherwise, and going from door to door saying "Trick or Treat" and in return being given small amounts of candy.  Spooky decorations of property such as mock grave stones, fake spider webbing, spiders and bats and such, and the color theme of orange and black are present as well.

Now it is true that the association of the night with the dead and evil spirits I think has a certain appeal to people who actually are fascinated with the dead and/or evil spirits.  I would wager that a lot of people that believe in occult practices take Halloween quite seriously.  One could naturally assume that attempts to communicate with the dead or at summoning evil spirits would be more prevalent on this night than most others - especially by people who have no idea what they're doing and are just looking for a scary thrill.  Now there are many religious types who dislike Halloween because of its connection with death, and spooky imagery, and the dominant themes of evil undead and demonic-looking things.  My experience with Halloween has been that the night itself is mostly harmless unless it is humans, through the usual careless action associated with festivities, causing the problems.  I have dealt with more evil things on nights one would not associate with any tradition of the dead, and as for the demonic... I've yet to meet a demon that looks like something from a Hollywood movie, though Al Pacino comes kind of close. 

I see what you're getting at, but I think there's room for both.  Look at it from another perspective, if you celebrated Yule, wouldn't you be upset that a Christian holiday has become synonymous with your own?  Yet there are still people who observe Yule and several other seasonal holidays.  I do agree with you that the names of both Christmas and Easter have become associated with entirely different traditions, but that doesn't mean you can't continue to practice the way you observe those days.  Who knows, maybe the secularized versions of Christmas and Easter will be called something else in the future.  (I just hope Christmas isn't called Wintereenmas.  Tim Buckley's web-comic leaving a lasting impression on society will make me a sad, sad panda.)

And as for Halloween being the best holiday, I was being facetious.  It's my favorite holiday, and I find it depressing that the people around me now do not celebrate it like those around me when I was younger.  I suspect you have a similar source of resentment towards the commercialized versions of Christmas and Easter.  I can respect that, but I myself prefer to celebrate the ideals of Santa Clause rather than the birth of Jesus Christ.

This is, by the way, the same Saint Nicholas that led to the "Children's Holiday" "Sinterklaas" (Sint Nicolaas) in the Netherlands. Perhaps interesting to note: Sinterklaas looks a lot more like a classical saint (wearing a mitre, tabbard, and lugging around a staff), than the oddballish Santa Claus.

An official product of the Coca-Cola Company.

The oddball one, that is ...

Now that's a strange subtaciation of a useless post.

This started as a stupid and useless topic about a song about halloween that, somehow, you managed to twist into a fairly intelligent topic.