Halloween Creeps Into BFA
November 5, 2019
Ever since we were little kids, Halloween has been that one night a year where we dress up as someone other than ourselves, and gorge on endless amounts of candy.
Now that we’re older, Halloween is all about pranks, parties, causing trouble, and just spending time with friends.
Americans spend around eight billion dollars on Halloween, and about $2 billion on candy alone.
But the bigger question is: What is Halloween?
About 2,000 years ago, the Celts (a medieval European culture) celebrated Sam Hain, (“Sah-Win”,) as a way to symbolize the harvest and the start of the new year. This according to History.com.
It was also believed the barrier between the living world and the afterlife was so thin that it allowed spirits to roam the Earth.
As a result, the Celts wore costumes made from animal skins in order to avoid being possessed by the spirits. They would also go door to door performing silly, comedic acts in exchange for food and drink.
Two millennia later, and those traditions have stood the test of time.
At BFA, the Halloween spirit can be seen from events such as the Fright Night to students dressing up in costume.
Student Council wanted to become more involved with the community, and decided to put on a movie night called Fright Night.
“Mr. Archambault and I wanted to increase the amount of stuff Student Council is involved in. We do our big events during the year, but we thought that it would be appropriate for Student Council to do something every month. We were looking at the calendar, and we started off with Homecoming in September. And then we were thinking it would be kinda cool to do something around Halloween,” English teacher Mary Ellen Tourville said.
They also wanted to be more inclusive for students.
“We also thought that some kids feel left out of athletic events like Homecoming. But a movie night would be including everyone that wanted to come, we thought that would be a great thing for student council to do,” Tourville explained.
Fright Night showed the 1984 movie Ghostbusters, but not without competition. Ghostbusters contended with The Ring, Ouija, Light Out, and Insidious.
Tourville sent out a Google form to the student body to vote on the movie, with Ghostbusters in the lead.
“Ghostbusters won with 26% of the votes, the next nearest was Lights Out with 22%. Ouija was third with 20%, then Insidious and The Ring in last place,” Tourville said.
About 30-40 students went to the Fright Night event, which wasn’t a bad turnout for the first year.
The movie started at 7 o’clock, and if students arrived before then they would be able to go trick-or-treating down the hall, if they were dressed in costume.
There were several times during the movie when the students would yell out “Ghostbusters!!” whenever the theme song came on.
Student Council plans on continuing this event for next year.
“We thought it was pretty good, we are pretty happy with the turnout, and we think we’ll do it again next year. We might up the game a little bit and make the trick-or-treating a little scarier, have people jumping out of corners and stuff like that. We were also thinking we could do something with the movie too, like if we work together with drama, we might be able to add some scary effects to the movie,” Tourville said.
Many believe Halloween is a little too scary, but others think it’s just about maturity.
Megan Bachand (‘21) thinks so.
“I think it gets progressively scary as you grow up. I mean when you’re little it is the stereotypical animated vampires, bats, stuff like that. When you get older it seems to have a sort of realistic feel to it, and it gets more scary because you’re more mature, and you can handle it,” Bachand said.
Speaking of scary, horror movies. How many can say they haven’t been scared by one?
Well Bachand can.
“I like trying to get scared by a movie, but I haven’t met one that can really, really scared me. Yet. I was never allowed to watch them growing up. Not like never never. Just certain movies, ‘Oh this one would scare you too much,’ and recently I’ve been going back and watching them like The Shining, and Nightmare On Elm Street. So I don’t know, I think they’re fine,” Bachand said.
Even as we age, Halloween can still be a time of fun. What’s not to like, costumes, parties, candy, and friends.
Works Cited:
The History of Halloween- National Geographic