It is 5pm, early October, and you notice it again – the slight change in the air. It’s cold but also slightly gloomy, like you can smell the wet leaves under your feet and the paper bats your neighbour has put on their windows give you a shiver up the spine. Someone, two streets over has a bonfire going, the smell pulling at your senses.
And here they are. The small, almost too-short-to-notice moments, the tingle at the back of your neck, the pull toward anything with a flame — those are the reasons people say they love spooky season.
And every year it happens for a full month.
But that month flies away on its broom so quickly that by the time you’ve made a plan and given yourself permission to do the ghost walk, the corn maze, the pumpkins carving – it’s the 2nd of November and the shops are melting Mariah Carey records so they can spin them for 60 days in a row. Again.
What you need is a clear spooky-ish map with things that will challenge you just enough to make you crave more, but not enough to keep you awake at 2am. And I intend on giving it to you. So…
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13 Spooky Season Activities You Won’t Regret at 2 am
I’ve created a spooky-meter for you, my little fog-hunter. The build-up is exactly what turns October from a month you meant to enjoy into one you can actually taste. Caramel first. Then cloves and orange peel. Then woodsmoke and cold air by the end.
Week 1 – Barely spooky
1. Simmer pot that makes you home smell like a witch kitchen – orange peel, cloves, star anise, bay. This is a very low effort activity that sets the tone for everything that’s to come later. You can do that multiple times throughout the month when you crave the smell.
2. Bake something Halloween that isn’t pumpkin spice – caramel apples, meringue ghosts, soul cakes, take your pick and make something sweet and aromatic.
3. Dusk walk to look at everyone’s decorations – for sure there are people who decorate their houses on the very first week of October, go check what they’ve done. If your neighbourhood is still late on decorations, visit your town’s shopping street – a gloomy evening walk will give you just what you need, and I guarantee you the shops are all in the spooky mood.
Week 2 – Lights off, foggy vibes on
4. Blackout night – Imagine you live in Victorian era and there’s no electricity. The only source of light are the candles you light. Spend the evening at home that way. Forget about TV and phone. Read, write, pet your dog, talk to your housemates, practice a hobby.
5. Creepy podcast while you do the most boring chore you can think of – Folding the laundry of washing the dishes just became much more enjoyable. A short list with spooky podcasts is located just under this paragraph.
6. Read something Gothic – go with a classic you know won’t disappoint you: Dracula by Bram Stoker, The Shining by Stephen King; Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; Coraline by Neil Gaiman; Interview with The Vampire by Anne Rice
Week 3 – Out of the house
7. Walk an old cemetery in the late afternoon – take your bestie with you, make some spooky photos. Bonus points if you find a Victorian era grave and do a research on who it belongs to, what life that person lived.
8. Visit an antique or curiosity shop – your task is to leave with one strange object from the place – something that can become the symbol of October to you this year. Next year, you can grab another thing and start building yourself an October memory box.
9. Corn maze after dark – another activity you can ask your bestie to join you for, it’s spooky but also safe.
Week 4 – Halloween week
10. Check the weather forecast and pick the gloomiest evening for a tarot card reading at home, with lights off, candles lit.
11. Write a ghost story by hand. Make it as creepy as you want or as funny as you want. Bonus points if it’s actually terrible.
12. Cook something a dead relative used to make. Halloween is the night the dead were meant to be close. You don’t have to believe any of it, but you can cook something you grandmother loved eating while she was alive. You kind of honour her memory this way.
13. Halloween night: write down what you’re letting die before the year ends – Don’t be dramatic, I am talking about habits, grudges, plans you’ve outgrown, goals you have no desire to chase. Burn the list safely.
Final Thoughts
I hope you like my 13 spooky-ish things to do in October. Halloween is the one holiday in the year when being weird, doing something crazy and exploring the eerie sides of our world is kind of encouraged. So if you need that last push to go ahead and do something different, fun but also on the edge – you have it now.
The ideas above are easy enough to be done on a Tuesday evening, but enterteining enough to keep your thoughts on them for the rest of the week. Journal your experience throughout, write your thoughts on going out of the ordinary, the challenges you met, the spookiness you woke up. Most of all, enjoy it.
Blogger, dreamer, procrastinator, and lover of everything soul-touching. My mission is to make you laugh, provoke your thoughts, light up your day and inspire you to fall in love with life and yourself.
