There’s a chill in the air. Ghouls and goblins are coming out of hiding and the witches’ cauldrons are bubbling. The spooky season has arrived, and we could not be more excited, especially with Halloween finally falling on a Friday this year. That means it is truly a Halloweekend, with festivities continuing all the way through to Sunday, as per the college tradition.
However, there are many who find these parties overwhelming and overstimulating. Thankfully you can still keep up the fun tradition of Halloweekend without the mildly claustrophobic nightmare that is house parties. Here are some group and introvert-friendly activities to do this Halloweekend sober while keeping the fun associated with these festivities!
Going Out
If you still want to hit the town with your friends without being cramped into a musty house, there are numerous events to attend in Riverside and the general Los Angeles area. Within Riverside itself is the Bellamy Place Light Show – a longstanding attraction with impressive animatronics and special effects that take you through “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
There’s also Castle Dark: an amusement park, here in Riverside, that hosts haunted mazes, scare zones and much more. In Los Angeles, there is the LA Haunted Hayride that offers many haunted attractions such as hayrides, mazes and houses. Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios is another attraction in the LA area perfect for the haunted house and haunted ride lovers.
Even if Halloween horror nights and haunted houses are not your thing, you still don’t have to be stuck inside all weekend. Not to worry. Grab your friends and head out to the local pumpkin patch. You can carve pumpkins and leave it at that, or you can do a jack-o’-lantern photoshoot around the city. If you’re allergic to pumpkins, you can take a sheet and cut out holes to do a ghost photoshoot instead, like @jackjanson88’s Tik Tok trend.
You can even do activities in your dorm or apartment hall. Leave out bowls of candy outside your door, and, if you know your suitemates well enough, go trick-or-treating with them. Just because you’re in college doesn’t mean this nostalgic fun has to stop.
Staying In
If you feel more like a chill weekend in, with friends or by yourself, then here are a few homebody friendly activities to do this weekend. Hold a haunted house-making competition. Instead of the festive gingerbread houses that come with the winter season, see who can make the best haunted house fit for ghouls and witches. Winners get bragging rights and can choose the movie for that night.
Speaking of movie nights, sit through a movie marathon with all the spookiest films this Halloween season. For a fun little twist, make themed treats and drinks for each movie you watch. For example, if part of the lineup is “The Mummy,” “Dracula” and “Frankenstein,” you could make Frankenstein’s monster sugar cookies, a mocktail with blood-red cranberry juice and mummy hot dogs.
There is much fun to be had this Halloween season, whether you partake in the partying or not. Don’t let the idea of what a college student “should” be doing on Halloweekend limit how you enjoy yourself this spooky season.
