OPINION | There should be more options for young adults to celebrate Halloween 

As kids and teens, we spend the entire beginning of the school year anticipating Halloween. We prepare our costumes for weeks and go to pumpkin patches, trying to find our parents’ stash of candy in the meantime. Then, suddenly, we graduate high school, and Halloween is reduced to staying inside or going out and getting wasted.  

I spent every year of my childhood dressing up and trick-or-treating. Even as a high schooler, my best friends and I planned group costumes and wandered around our neighborhoods with empty pillowcases ready for candy collection. 

My freshman year of college, I didn’t know what to do. I went to a Hallo-weekend frat party and drove halfway to Schriever for some house parties with a girl I barely knew from class. I just wanted to dress up and go outside, but the parties were my only option.  

As a sophomore, my roommates and I struggled to find a place to spend Halloween. I was the only roomie under 21, so we tried the house party scene again only to find out most parties were shot up or shut down. We spent the remainder of the night at Havana Grill (R.I.P) being hit on by weird, older men.  

Last year, I carved pumpkins with my boyfriend and family a couple weeks before Halloween and didn’t even bother to take Halloween night off of work. I put on an old dance costume and waited tables all night.  

I never wanted to spend the night getting drunk underage and worrying about finding a ride home. I really wanted to put on a cute costume and spend a social holiday being social. Now that I’m 21, going to bar crawls and parties is the only thing I know to do for Hallo-weekend.  

There’s always the option to stay in and watch movies, carve pumpkins and eat nasty candy corn, but what about those of us who want to dress up, be social and go outside? It seems like there’s nothing to do that doesn’t involve alcohol.  

People Magazine suggests pretty much the same “either stay in or get plastered” rhetoric. On a list of 10 things to do for Halloween as an adult, seven items are home-bound (bake a cake, binge watch “American Horror Story” or hand out candy to name a few). 

The non-home-body ideas include going to a Haunted House, going on a hayride and (you guessed it) going to a party.  

I have been to Hellscream Haunted House at least seven times since middle school. There’s only so much creativity in the same haunted house year after year. It’s almost become a social experience, in that I get to watch other people get scared and laugh at them.  

If any of you know of a fun hayride that lasts more than a trip to a pumpkin patch and back, let me know. The only hayride I know of is in Erie, Colo., 2 hours away from here, and it only serves as transportation around Anderson Farms, not an attraction.  

Haunted houses and hayrides are more anticipatory Halloween activities than actual night-of events. I think of hayrides as a daytime activity cluttered with little kids. Haunted houses are for the weekends before Halloween to get me into the spirit.  

It would be nice if a small business or local restaurant opened its doors and hosted a fun gathering not full of alcohol. It could just be costumes, friends, good vibes and maybe some cookies. An event like that may even help small businesses pull in some extra cash after a relatively slow early fall.

Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash.