Traditions and twists may vary when the night of Oct. 31 falls, but costumes are common among those celebrating Halloween. Planning time can range from days to months, or minutes before walking out the door. Kids anticipate the candy hunt all year long, planning out the exact route to take and get the most out of this one-night-a-year event where candy taken from random strangers lies up and down the streets. 

From throwing Halloween parties, bobbing for apples, carving pumpkins, visiting the apple orchard for hayrides and mazes, making candy apples with friends or family or sitting inside snuggled up watching scary movies, Halloween is the first holiday to kick off the fall season with a trick or a treat.

With Halloween only a few short weeks away, students at SHS prepare for their sweet and sassy or horrific and eerie Halloween costumes. Whether it’s homemade, running from one thrift store to the next or store bought, creativity is able to shine through everyone’s costume, no matter how traditional it might be.

Homemade

A ripped, tattered, pale colored baby doll dress with lace or ruffles, cracks and stitches drawn or painted onto the face, a bow pinned in the hair, baby doll socks with lace and flats becomes a costume fit for Halloween antics. Freshman Katie Arnold carefully chooses specific pieces similar to these to create her look for Halloween.

Arnold says she loves piecing her costumes together by thrift shopping, creating her costume and making it her own. It’s something she and her mom have been doing since she was in the fifth grade. Combining her love for Halloween and her mother’s artistic abilities makes for an activity that each of them look forward to every year, Arnold says.

“We usually go to Goodwill and find dresses and stuff that look like what it is. Sometimes, we’ll rip them up, maybe put fake blood on it or something,” Arnold said.

This year, Arnold has decided to become a broken doll for one night. After her and her mom came across a photo on Pinterest of a doll, they were inspired to recreate it into a more creative and gory costume for the Halloween season.

“We found a dummy and thought it would be fun to do a broken (doll) because it’s Halloween,” Arnold said.

Comparably, junior Taylor Kincaid has bought costumes from stores in the past. She thinks that the costumes from stores aren’t durable and aren’t always accurate to the character which is something that’s important to the Halloween experience.

“I like to make my own [costumes] because the store bought ones are cheap and the fabric rips,” Kincaid says.

Kincaid loves becoming the character by trying to recreate costumes as close to the character as possible by creating it herself.

Being an actor, altering herself to create the character is something that she has experience with. This makes Halloween more exciting for her.

Store-bought

A plain white tee shirt, black leather jacket, loose jeans, a pair of black Chuck Taylor’s and of course slicked back hair is a costume seen nearly every year.

Junior Hastings Munsey plans to use items such as these to complete her Greaser costume for this year’s Halloween events.

Munsey likes to build her costume by thrift shopping, but she doesn’t mind purchasing costumes from the store, and says that she has bought some costumes for past year’s Halloweens.

“I was a hotdog one year,” Munsey said, followed by laughter.

This year, with the fall musical in mind, she has decided to become a Greaser, someone who looks as if they’ve stepped right out of “Grease.”

In contrast to how Munsey has bought costumes but prefers to make her own, freshman Lily Brown has bought all of her costumes for Halloween each year. She says that she believes store bought costumes are not only much easier, but that they’re more detailed. Brown typically goes to a Halloween discount store to pick out her costume for the Halloween festivities ahead.

“The costumes you buy generally have a lot more design in them and have a lot more time put into them. If you make them, it’s more significant, but it’s a lot easier just to buy it,” Brown said.

Though childhood may be over, the excitement can still remain on Oct. 31 every year by continuing to dress up as someone else for one night a year and participating in the Halloween festivities.

Whether it’s creepy, gory costumes with fake blood dripping onto a torn tee shirt or putting on a sparkly princess dress and a tiara, Halloween creates an atmosphere that’s crafty and accepting of all.

This one-night-a-year event allows people of every age to be someone they aren’t in real life without fear of judgement. It allows them to be someone, maybe, that they wish they could be.