Your University Guide To Halloween

Halloween is one of the best times of the year at university.

 

You’ve settled in with your new flat family and already made fresher week memories for life. You’ve started to get your head around your course (hopefully, anyway) and the madness of first year university is beginning to calm – but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a few more wild nights, right?

 

Once a year each university city across the U.K. is taken over by ghouls, ghosts and ghastly people. No, don’t worry, we’re not talking about Student Finance debt collectors. Halloween is the only opportunity you have to show off your darker side without judgement. At university, everyone tends to go a bit wilder than usual this week!

 

But you only get one Halloween a year: you want to make the most of it – what are the best things to do?

 

Here’s your university guide to Halloween!

The obvious and, well, most popular thing to do, is to go out. Simple as. During Halloween week your university city will be buzzing. With night coming sooner and the moon getting brighter, October is one of those special months to enjoy an evening out on the town.

There will be plenty going on at your usually favoured clubs, but look out for special takeovers such as the Halloween Purge or – if you’re in Manchester – the Halloween Carnival. If you really want to take in the full weirdness of the night, start with a bar crawl in your spookiest get-up before finishing the evening at the club. You’ll most definitely find some characters of the night to team-up with.

If you’d prefer to skip the crawl and go straight to the event, then a Halloween themed pre-drinks party is a motive to consider. Gather your flatmates, neighbours or anyone in the Samhain spirit and poison yourself with bewitching concoctions coming from the scariest monster there is: Glen’s Vodka.

This is also a good chance to do some flat bonding and decorate (or maybe even clean) your shared communal space. No judgment here. Also, by avoiding going out too early you can keep the outfit you’ve spent hours perfecting still looking recognisable, unless apple bobbing gets a bit messy.

But – as your parents probably told you – university isn’t always about drinking; the same goes for Halloween. During October there are plenty of fun day-time/sober horrors to experience.

 

Theme parks such as Alton Towers and Thorpe Park – or even local carnivals – will double-down on their hair-raising offerings. During Halloween, theme parks will make an extra effort to send shivers down your spine – and that’s even before you step foot on a roller-coaster. Check out your local funfairs and theme parks to see what kind of spooky October evenings they have planned.

Cineworld meets The Walking Dead meets The Fast and Furious. What a combination. Well, it’s not exactly fast, or even furious, more stationary and frightened, but that wouldn’t make a good movie franchise.

Drive through cinemas are immensely popular – maybe thanks in part to social distancing rules in the past, but they do look fun. Here you can enjoy some big screen Hollywood horrors whilst paid actors circle your car to give some real 4D fright. It definitely an experience you should try out. They are everywhere at the minute, so keep a look on your local Facebook event pages.

If you don’t drive, then don’t worry. Bring the cinema to your halls and have a horror movie marathon scarier than your bank balance after all-night Jägerbombs at the Student Union. Seriously, though, this is a great chance for more flat bonding and a guaranteed Halloween hangover cure, should you need it!

Pro tip: turn off all the lights, shut the curtains, light some candles and all chip-in towards a cheap projector for maximum fright. Worth it.