An illustration of Aiden's profile. He has light skin, short brown hair and is wearing a blue shirt.

Hallo-ME-en by Aiden H. '28

Aiden, in Halloweens

As you’ve all probably gleaned by now, I’m pretty cool. And like any cool person, my favorite holiday is Halloween. You get the emo, you get the drag, you get the candy, you get the parties–case in point.

Yet like all good loves, Halloween and I have had a rocky relationship over the past 20 years.⁠01 hey so i'll throw up actually Now experiencing another one leaving us behind, and with nothing but the imminent disasters of a Boston winter to look forward to, I find myself looking back through photo albums and Facebook pages to reflect on all of my Halloweens past.

So, here I present a photo chronology of all of my past Halloween costumes:

2006-2007:

Do babies do Halloween? I don’t know. It would be cute! But regardless there are no photos of me at baby Halloween and I do not know what I was.

2008 – Spiderman

A toddler dressed as spiderman, with the glasses pushed up and a pouty face showing

I’m fairly certain I wore this Spiderman costume many times, and I can see why! Unfortunately I was cutest as a toddler, and that is very apparent here. If only Marvel had seen this before casting Tom Holland. I’ve been Spiderman.

2009 – Boxer

A toddler dressed in a blue boxing robe with red boxing gloves, punching up

Do I like boxing? No. Do I remember wearing this? No. Do I have perfect form? Yes.

2010-2016 – Unknown??

As an overly angsty elementary schooler, I went through a good number of years as an anti-Halloween guy, mostly for attention. I think one year I was a vampire, but the rest I didn’t dress up at all.

Most of the time I would stay back from trick-or-treating to pass out Halloween candy. In 5th grade, though, I went full anti-establishment and just wrote “Costume” on a t-shirt as an act of protest. Looking back, quite possibly the most annoying thing I’ve ever done. At the time? Camp and iconic.

2017 – Rick 

A middle schooler dressed as Rick from the TV show Rick and Morty, with a white lab coat, teal shirt underneath, white face paint, and a point grey wig

I had barely seen Rick and Morty by the time I was in 6th grade, but Spirit Halloween had the wig, I wanted to do face paint, and what better way to cover my prepubescent unibrow than with an over-the-top fake one! Also, clock the Woodstock Vans that I wore 24/7 in 6th grade for some reason?

In middle school we had dances on/around Halloween every year, so I did fully show up to my 6th grade gym in this, crushed a couple Snickers bars, and danced to Lip Gloss by Lil Mama.

2018 – Bob Ross

I don’t have a photo of this one, which is tragic because I ATE in the wig. I went through a very big and genuine Bob Ross phase in 7th grade because it helped me fall asleep, and then he was started to become a pop culture figure for Gen Z, so I pulled out this timely classic.

2019 – Cow

In a lit living area, a kid in a cow costume looks angrily at the camera

This is, unironically, my favorite photo of me ever taken. I use it as my profile picture for everything still, even 7 years later. My mom wanted to get a photo of me for Halloween, and somewhere between all of the photos of me smiling, we got this crazy one where I’m looking pissed straight at the camera. I thought (think, honestly) the rubber utters were the funniest thing. It might have also been inspired by MOO! by Doja Cat because I was very into that at the time, but I can’t confirm if these are causal or correlated cow events.

2021 – E-Girl

A black and white photo of teenagers, one wearing a black zip up and a plaid skirt, the other with a black beanie, shirt, and sweatpants with a goatee painted on with makeup

I don’t know if words can do this justice. My girlfriend Ramona and I floated the idea of doing a Halloween costume contest with our friends just so we had a reason to show people our hilarious idea. We pulled into an H&M, and by the end of the day two baddies were born: an E-boy and an E-girl. What is not accentuated in this photo is how short that plaid skirt sat on my legs and how thick my mascara was. I guess you can count this night as my emo phase?

2023 – Patrick Bateman

A blurry photo of a group of four outside at night in various halloween costumes.

Senior year of high school, my friends and I drove an hour away to a haunted corn maze. This was bad. Not because of a lack of fun or anything, but instead because I was dressed up as notoriously crazy but undoubtedly sexy Patrick Bateman from American Psycho (about 2 years before it became a trend, btw), yet every single employee at the corn maze kept calling me Harry Potter (which why would Harry Potter have a full suit and a plastic poncho??).

2026 – Jacob Black

Flash forward to this year. For the past month, a group of friends on my dorm floor and I have been watching every single Twilight movie. So when the topic of Halloween costumes came up, there was naturally only one thing we could do (we even convinced our GRA)!

For reference, I absolutely hate Jacob and am 100% Team Edward. However, it both made more sense for me to be Jacob and would be funnier if my friend Meg H. ’29 was Edward.

It initially was just going to be a little bit, but last night we decided to take some creative liberties and do a photoshoot outside in the EC Courtyard.

The cast(?) is as follows:

  • Aiden H. ’28 – Jacob Black
  • Meg H. ’29 – Edward Cullen
  • Lauren W. ’28 – Bella Swan
  • Fatimeh A.G. ’27 – Alice Cullen
  • Mack C. PhD – the Volturi, vaguely

Enjoy my iMovie production:

🎃👻🍬🦇💀🧡

  1. hey so i'll throw up actually⁠ ↑