Halloween challenged? How about a Victorian mourning tour at Heritage Square Museum?

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There are creepy happenings at Heritage Square Museum this Halloween. You can learn everything you’ve ever wanted to know about death and mourning etiquette in Victorian times, as well as participate in a funeral as part of the Highland Park landmark’s mourning tours program. Did you know, for instance, that while women were expected to mourn for two years, men got off with a single year? Ladies were expected to dress from head-to-toe in black -- even their calling cards and lace handkerchiefs were outlined in the charcoal-hue.

‘Since funeral parlors were yet to be invented,’ director of administration and operations Jessica Alicea says, ‘bodies were kept at home in a casket for viewing.’ Many ingenious devices were invented for death, among them a pull string inserted into the casket and attached to a bell above ground -- just in case the person inside wasn’t actually, well, dead.

The programs take place noon to 4 p.m. Oct. 24 and 25. For those with impressionable children, the Sunday program is more family friendly. Children ages 2 to 12 are encouraged to come in costume, play period games and make 19th century harvest crafts. The San Garbriel Valley Storytellers will spin spooky stories in the Ford house, one of the historic structures that make up Heritage Square.

Museum admission is $5 to $10; kids under 6 are free. For more information call (323) 225-2700 or go to heritagesquare.org.

-- Barbara Thornburg