How to Catch the Halloween Spirit

Halloween is a pain in the ass. Pumpkin carving is messy and time-consuming and mostly just reminds you you’re terrible at arts and crafts. Your kids really only want to dress up as whatever costume comes with the biggest and most dangerous looking weapon. A trip to the Spirit store makes you feel like you’ve just exposed your children to the most degenerate elements of humanity: stripper slut from Sons of Anarchy costume around one corner and realistic looking human organs covered in red slime around the next. Sure, this is where you go to get the TMNT costume your five year old has been begging for, but it’s right next to a chainsaw dripping with blood. Also, watch where you step. You don’t want to accidentally activate the enormous animatronic spider that will jump out and kick off a lifetime of arachnophobia in your 3 year old. Add to all that the fact that brainstorming a costume for yourself that’s fun, not offensive and doesn’t have the word ‘sexy’ in the name seems futile. Oh, and finding candy wrappers in the laundry for weeks after you thought you eradicated the candy supply makes you want to strangle someone.

Yep, Halloween is kind of the worst. Except: it’s also totally the best. Don’t worry, it’s ok if you’ve gotten bogged down in the minutia and lost the Halloween spirit. It happens to the best of us. I’m here to help.

Five steps to remembering why you LOVE Halloween:

Step 1: Buy your favorite Halloween candy JUST FOR YOU. 

Remember when you were a kid and you had to just hope someone in your neighborhood wasn’t a cheap ass and would be handing out full Butterfingers? Well now you’re an adult and you can buy your own goddamn Butterfingers! And this time of year it’s seasonally acceptable to just have a bag of your favorites in your drawer at work. You’re not a fatty, you’re in training for the big day.

Step 2: Dig out pictures from Halloweens past and post them on social media.

This year is a particularly special Halloween because it falls on a Friday (which I read in a Meme only happens once every 777 years). So not only do we not have to worry about being hungover at work the next day, but the day before is Throwback Thursday! We can spend all day posting pictures like this:

And remembering when it was age-appropriate to dress like a slutty Wicked Witch of the West.

Step 3: Bust out the weird gothy accessories you occasionally randomly purchase.

Spiderweb fishnets you have no idea where you got?

This is the week to wear them!

Awesome skull scarf you once considered wearing to a funeral but then decided you’d be the only one who would think it was funny?

It’s totally not weird the week of Halloween!

(Don’t wear them together, though. Then you just look like you put on your slutty pirate costume a day early:

It’s not ok.)

Step 4: Watch a marathon of Roseanne Halloween episodes on the TVLand channel.

This is one of the more important steps to regaining the Halloween spirit and is not to be missed. If you can watch three episodes of Roseanne, Dan, Jackie and the kids dressing up fantastically and elaborately and being assholes to each other and everyone around them in sadistically hilarious ways without feeling moved by the Halloween spirit to share it with everyone around you… well then you’re dead inside (and not in the cool, zombie way) and I can’t help you.

Step 5: Last, but not least, read this entire thread of scary stories.

I read half of them yesterday and the other half today while I was home alone. I had to take breaks because it started to be terrifying to go into the garage or upstairs by myself. It seemed clear there were like 80 ghosts hiding in both of those places. Even though we’re the original owners of this house.

Some of the stories are lame and some are horrifying. I think it makes them all so much more fascinating that they’re all told by people who believe what they’re telling implicitly (but I’m also kind of a voyeur).

I’m a fairly firm skeptic, so I don’t really have any spooky stories, but I do have in my possession the Ouija Board we used when we were 16 to contact the spirits in my BFF’s house. It’s possible we got in touch with River Phoenix once, after he ODed. I swear it wasn’t me pushing the pointer thing, despite the fact everyone suspected me. I think it might have been Amanda, though. I also one time did Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board at the 9th grade cheer sleepover and I was the person being lifted. I had my eyes closed the whole time as they chanted and felt them lift me off the ground. After a few minutes of the feverishly whispered chanting, I peeked, saw the ceiling inches from my face, screamed bloody murder and they dropped me. But I think that was physics, not poltergeists.

Those are my only paranormal experiences. But if you have any good ones, feel free to leave them in the comments. Even though I’ll be sure there was a logical explanation, I assure you they’ll make me check behind the shower curtain in the bathroom before I pee.

That should do it: Go forth and spread the Halloween cheer!!