Springsteen loves Halloween: From rockin' with the Jersey Devil to popping out of a coffin

Bruce Springsteen loves Halloween.

For many years, he held an open house at his former Rumson home on the spooky holiday, drawing kids from around the area who gawked at the elaborate Halloween displays and feasted on full-size candy bars. That tradition ended in 2008, when Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa, posted on their social media sites that there would be no Halloween event that year.

"To our friends and neighbors:

So as not to inconvenience you this Halloween, due to 'catastrophic success' (read: too many visitors for the neighborhood to handle) and concern for the safety of kids and parents, we won't be having our usual Halloween display this year in Rumson. We wish everyone a safe and Happy Halloween!" Springsteen and Scialfa wrote.

There may not have been a Halloween display in 2008, but Springsteen gave a ghoulish gift to his fans by releasing a video, "A Night with the Jersey Devil," filmed on his Colts Neck farm. If you've grown up in southern or central New Jersey, you most likely know at least a bit about the legend of the Jersey Devil, a bat-winged, goat-headed creature who was the 13th child of an unfortunate Pine Barrens resident named Jane Leeds, who was known to her neighbors as Mother Leeds.

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Leeds supposedly cursed her unborn child when she discovered she was pregnant yet again, declaring that the infant would be the devil. Born on a dark and stormy night, the child obliged, turning into a fearsome creature with a forked tail that flew up the chimney and disappeared into the Pine Barrens.

Springsteen's song features him emerging from a dark pond to sing a blues-based song featuring a bullet mic and wailing guitar. In it, he describes how

"Daddy drag me to the river tie me in rocks

Throw me in where it's deep and wide

I go down, I don't die

Hole in the river bottom, I crawl through

Come back kill six brothers and sisters, kill papa too."

That's a real Jersey Devil for you.

Springsteen's Halloween hijinks reached their Jersey Shore high point back in 1987, when he and the E Street Band, dressed in black with masks on, took over the stage at McLoone's Rum Runner in Sea Bright on Halloween night, as a band called "The Terrorists of Love." They debuted three songs from the brand new Tunnel of Love album that night.

"A band, called 'The Terrorists of Love,' dressed all in black, entered the building and physically removed my band from the stage," Rum Runner owner and musician Tim McLoone told the Asbury Park Press in 2014. "The people in the audience were almost afraid to believe it was Bruce, because he had this black mask on. Then he took the mask off. It was fantastic."

That's likely the most famous of Springsteen's Halloween appearances, but it's far from the only one.

Back on Halloween night in 1980, Springsteen and the E Street Band were in the midst of "The River" tour at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Bruce appeared on stage that night encased in a coffin, popping out with his guitar when a spotlight hit the stage. The show kicked off with "Haunted House," a 1958 song by Johnny Fuller that hilariously describes travails of the singer after he moves into a house occupied by a creature that "had one big eye and two big feet."

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Four years later, during the mega-successful "Born in the U.S.A." tour, Springsteen and the E Streeters were again on stage on Halloween, again in L.A.

Bruce appeared onstage in a coffin, and recited a long intro describing the various methods used by Dr. Frankenstein to revive him: "they tried all sorts of scientific methods … (?) electricity … then they tried to awaken his sexual perceptions … then they performed an attack on his auditorial system (´Louie Louie´ is played on tape) … but nothing seemed to work. … Then they tried Professor Frankenstein's foolproof monster wake-up … but then out of the darkness came a mystery man (a tape of ´The Good, the Bad, the Ugly´ is played and Bruce is given a guitar)."

Springsteen popped out of the coffin and broke into Jerry Lee Lewis' "High School Confidential," revived by rock 'n' roll.

Onstage with the "other band" on Halloween in 1992, Springsteen was in Minneapolis. No coffin this time, but the show did start with "Spirit in the Night," preceded by pianist Roy Bittan playing Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor." You'll recognize the piece if you've seen the movie "Fantasia," where it opens the film. It's been used in horror classics as well, including "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and, more recently, in the sci-fi film, "Rollerball."

Not on Halloween this time, but in 2007, during the "Magic" tour, Springsteen and the band appeared at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and started the show by bursting out of a coffin before starting the opener "Radio Nowhere." Perhaps he was paying homage to the 1980 and 1984 Halloween shows at the same venue.

In 2012, Bruce and the E Street Band were back onstage on Halloween, this time in Rochester, New York. The show was postponed a day after Superstorm Sandy struck, but a somewhat somber show (Springsteen talked about the devastation at the Jersey Shore before playing "My City of Ruins") was lightened by two performances: the concert kicked off with "A Night with the Jersey Devil," and included a cover of "Monster Mash," by Bobby 'Boris' Pickett and the Crypt Kickers.

This may not have been the E Street Band's finest hour. Bruce even jokingly says, "This is terrible" at one point during the song.

That was the last of Bruce Springsteen's Halloween shows to date, but the recently announced rescheduled Canadian dates include a gig on Oct. 31, 2024, in Montreal. So maybe Bruce has some more ghoulish surprises up his sleeve? We'll see next Halloween.

Jean Mikle covers Toms River and several other Ocean County towns, and has been writing about local government and politics at the Jersey Shore for nearly 40 years. She's also passionate about the Shore's storied music scene. Contact her: @jeanmikle,  jmikle@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Bruce Springsteen loves putting Halloween touch on his concerts