Megan Marotta, of Pitman, shops for Halloween costumes for her two young daughters at Once Upon a Child in Deptford, New Jersey, on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. The South Jersey store sells Halloween costumes for $8.86 on average. Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS
There was a time when October felt electric. The air got crisp, grocery stores smelled like pumpkin spice and rubber masks, and neighborhoods came alive with fog machines and plastic skeletons tangled in trees.
Halloween used to feel so magical. It was a whole night where kids ran wild with pillowcases, teenagers plotted pranks, and adults leaned fully into the chaos.
Now, it feels like the season of spookiness has been replaced by the season of scheduled, supervised, and sanitized.
I first noticed it a few years ago when fewer and fewer trick-or-treaters came around the neighborhoods during the official trick or treat hours. At first, I blamed the weather, or maybe the rise of store-bought costumes that cost more than my electric bill. However, the truth hit me one October evening when a local church parking lot was filled with kids.
They were “trunk-or-treating.”
For those who haven’t experienced it, a trunk-or-treat is basically a condensed, drive-in version of Halloween. Parents decorate their car trunks, hand out candy from the backseat, and call it a night before the moon’s even fully up. It’s cute, safe, and convenient! But it’s also kind of sad.
There’s no mystery. No flickering porch light daring you to knock. No house that hands out toothbrushes (which, in its own weird way, is part of the fun). Instead, everything’s contained in one well-lit parking lot, where every Snickers bar is accounted for and every scare is pre-approved.
While I get it, safety, community, efficiency, something’s been lost. Halloween used to have a thrill to it, a little danger even. Now, it’s got a curfew and a carpool schedule.
This year, I decided to try to reclaim a little of that missing Halloween spirit by going to Six Flags’ Fright Fest, a seasonal tradition that once terrified me as a kid. I remembered hiding behind my older cousins while zombie clowns chased us through foggy pathways, and screaming when scare actors appeared out of nowhere.
When I went back this year, the vibe was different.
Don’t get me wrong — it was fun. There were haunted mazes (that were seriously overpriced), haunted food prices, and haunted lines that lasted longer than my fear. But the fear part? Barely there. I think I screamed once, and that might’ve been at the price of a churro.
I saw maybe five scare actors total, all looking exhausted and mildly apologetic. The fog machines were struggling, and the crowd seemed more interested in TikTok videos than actual terror. One actor half-heartedly dragged a fake axe near us before giving up and taking a selfie with someone.
Maybe I’ve just grown up. Or maybe Halloween has mellowed out and traded its fangs for filters.
Between social media, liability waivers, and overproduced “haunted experiences,” it feels like Halloween has gone corporate. We’ve replaced haunted houses with “immersive horror experiences” that cost $70 a ticket and spontaneous scares with carefully timed jump cuts on YouTube.
Even horror movies —the thing that used to unite thrill-seekers— are being watered down into “elevated horror” think pieces. There’s nothing wrong with sophistication, but sometimes you just want a cheap scream and some fake blood.
Meanwhile, the streets are quiet. Where kids once roamed in groups, you now see a handful escorted by parents with flashlights and GPS trackers. Neighborhoods that used to compete for the best decorations now settle for one deflated inflatable spider and a “Happy Fall Y’all” sign.
It’s like Halloween’s gone from “The Nightmare Before Christmas”` to just… “The Night Before Bedtime.”
Of course, the world has changed. Parents are more cautious. Communities are more disconnected. Social media has made it easier to show off a costume online than actually go outside in it. And let’s be honest, candy inflation is real.
There’s still a part of me that misses the unpredictable, chaotic energy of old-school Halloween. The kind where you didn’t know if the next house would give you a king-sized candy bar or a mild heart attack. The kind where scare actors didn’t have to compete with smartphones for attention.
Maybe the Halloween spirit isn’t gone–maybe it’s just quieter, buried under LED lights and curated “fall vibes.” Maybe we’ve all just gotten a little too comfortable, too safe, and too grown-up to let ourselves be scared anymore.
Still, when I think about what made Halloween so fun as a kid, it wasn’t the candy or even the costumes. It was that strange sense of freedom, that for one night, you could be anyone, go anywhere, and let the darkness be exciting instead of dangerous.
I hope one day, we find a way to bring that back and let Halloween feel wild again.