As everyone knows, Halloween is approaching which means… spooky season. Which leads some wondering, what is the best Halloween activity to do?

Some of the top Halloween activities are carving pumpkins (Jack-O-Lanterns), Trick-or-treating, dressing up, partying, seeing ghost, and watching scary movies. This leads us thinking, where did these activities originate? In an article by, (https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2021/10/the-origins-of-halloween-traditions/) they state that carving pumpkins, “It is allegedly based on a legend about a man named Stingy Jack who repeatedly trapped the Devil and only let him go on the condition that Jack would never go to Hell. But when Jack died, he learned that Heaven did not want his soul either, so he was forced to wander the Earth as a ghost for eternity. The Devil gave Jack a burning lump of coal in a carved-out turnip to light his way. Locals eventually began carving scary faces into their own turnips to frighten away evil spirits.” Another activity they talked about was wearing scary costumes, and trick or treating where they said, “In order to avoid being terrorized by all the evil spirits walking the Earth during Samhain, the Celts donned disguises so that they would not be mistaken for spirits themselves and be left alone.”  and for trick or treating, since there are mainly three theories they talk about, I will state the one that is more associated to Americans, “A third theory argues that modern American trick-or-treating stems from “belsnickeling,” a German-American Christmas tradition where children would dress in costume and then call on their neighbors to see if the adults could guess the identities of the disguised. In one version of the practice, the children were rewarded with food or other treats if no one could identify them.” These origins help understand where these activities came from and how scary some of these actually are which can make the activity more spooky or instead of doing activities the modern way you can tried them how they were originally created. You may also be curious of all the other origins of the activities. So if you carve a pumpkin, make it scary to not attract any evil/haunted spirits.

In a random survey of 74 Morton Students 23 (31.1%) chose that they would rather watch scary movies than do any other Halloween activity. In second place came going to a haunted house chosen by 14 (18.9%) of Morton Students.

“I chose scary movies because Id rather be inside than out”  said Morton Student, Airam Gil.

Bryan Lopez, Junior Morton Student, stated, “Scary movies because watching it with friends or family brings is closer”

“I would watch scary movies cause they could be entertaining and scary and you can have a lot of fun with your friends” Joseline Soto told us.

“I chose haunted house cause its a good way to get scared for Halloween”  Lisette Aragon said.

Theresa Ramirez  chose Trick- Or – Treating because, “Free candy man” directly as quoted.

And me as a Morton Student I chose Haunted house because “getting scared can be fun.”