An American Halloween

I had my most amazing Halloween ever this year. I’ve had some really good times in England and last year’s 4-night Leicester Halloween party was so much fun, but this year I got to experience an American Halloween.

America is known for celebrating Halloween on a much greater scale than the Brits, and it’s certainly true that it would be pretty hard to ignore the holiday here. Early in October, all kinds of exciting Halloween candy started appearing in shops (I’m eating a caramel apple flavoured lolly and candy corn flavoured marshmallows as I write) and several aisles were dedicated to Halloween decorations as opposed to England’s typical single, token aisle. We didn’t have a house to decorate, but my roommates and I made a point of decorating our dorm as Halloween-y as we could. And my roommate’s Grandma gave her candy corn for me to finally try!

Throughout the entire month and even into November, events were going on, and in Southern California, being near Hollywood, so many were pretty unmissable! I saved most of my celebrating until Halloween weekend due to a huge rush of midterm work, but that weekend I went to Knotts Scary Farm (my first ever fright fest and first experience of haunted mazes!), Dark Harbor on the Queen Mary ship (a main attraction in Long Beach, where I’m staying), and the annual Hollywood Halloween Parade, for which I got together a last minute costume as Pikachu.

Universal Studios also host a Horror Nights event with themed mazes based on horror films and TV series such as Halloween, Insidious, Alien vs Predator, Crimson Peak, The Purge and the Walking Dead! There was even a 3D maze, which was so weird and terrifying! I purchased a day and night combo so that I was able to experience Universal Studios both during the day and during the night. Most of the Horror Nights events were during October, but a special ‘After Party’ Horror Nights was hosted on 6^th and 7^th November, which is what I went to! I honestly had the most amazing time and I even got to go on the Jurassic Park ride both in the day and the night, and they made it slightly different at night!

Living on campus, my only taste of suburban Halloween was through Snapchat stories, but the streets looked full of trick or treaters!

Next, Thanksgiving!