As the trees change from green to red and pumpkin spice lattés make a reappearance, teens all over America begin to shift their attention to Halloween. Typically, most Americans spend the eerie night showcasing their costumes and going door to door trick-or-treating at houses decked out with spiderwebs, tombstones on the front lawn, and carved pumpkins leading up to their doors. At Groton, students often miss the regular Halloween festivities if it falls on a school night, so students work hard throughout the week to make it to their well-earned “Halloweekend” celebration, falling  on October 27 this year. Groton’s Halloweekend is marked by the annual Halloween dance put on by the Student Activities Committee (SAC), where students dress up with their friends and take photos in their costumes before heading over to the student center. This year’s DJs for school dances, or “Radio Heads”, Jack Wilmerding and Lyndsey Toce ’19, said that the Halloweekend playlist is “gonna be spooky.” So, get ready to put on your costumes to dance the night away.

The question currently on many of our minds is “what will I be for Halloween this year?” According to PopSugar, some of the trendiest costumes are characters from Marvel’s Black Panther, the yodeling Walmart kid, Yanny and Laurel, and newlyweds Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. At Groton, students have also started to brainstorm ideas for the annual Halloween dance, with the art department even offering a costume-making workshop. Marc Borghi ’20 said, “I was thinking of dressing up like Kanye and Lil Pump in their new video.” In the lower school, Phoebe Lynch ’22 thinks that she and her friends might dress as “rock, paper, scissors.” Finally, Gloria Hui ’19 and her friends might be Goldilocks and the three bears for their last SAC Halloween dance. If you haven’t thought of what you and your squad might want to do for the Spooktober holiday, consider checking out Pinterest boards or take a trip to the Halloween store through an SAC outing in the next few weekends. 

Apart from the annual Halloween dance, the SAC has been working hard to plan an eventful, spooky October on the Circle. SAC heads Julien Alam and Eliza Lord ’19 have organized exciting campus events, as well as trips off campus. Over Parents Weekend, Julien explained, “there [will be a] pumpkin carving contest as well as a trip to the Halloween store. Our ‘Halloween Weekend’ [will include] the SAC haunted house, a dance and a Halloween movie.” The SAC Halloween activities, coupled with the spooky atmosphere October exudes, ensure an action-packed, exciting Halloween.