Halloweekend by Nicholas R. '29

‘Tis Halloweekend, a highly anticipated occasion for college students. Fortunately, I’m in college at a time when Halloween mostly falls on the weekend: last year it was on Friday, this year it’s a Saturday, and I believe next year it’s on a Sunday. Not only does this mean a whole weekend full of fun and spooky festivities, but it also means you can enjoy said festivities without too much worry over the greater terrors of exams and problem sets.

There’s been a lot to look forward to this Halloweekend. First, IFC⁠01 The Interfraternity Council, the governing body for fraternity and co-ed chapters at MIT organized a combined fundraiser for breast cancer research and house-decorating competition among frats. My frat also threw a party on Friday night. With both of these events coming up, we knew we had to lock in on decorations.

So, during this past week leading up to Halloweekend, a few of my fellow brothers and I formed the “Halloween committee” to begin decorating the house.

We started with lighting, keeping it to mostly red and purple for spooky vibes. It paired really nicely with our front door, which reminds me of the Red Room from The Haunting of Hill House.⁠02 a.k.a. one of my favorite shows of all time We also ratchet-strapped a projector to the side of one of our fire escape terraces so that we could project onto the sidewalk.

Spooky red and purple lighting

The projector. It looks precarious but I assure you it was very secure.

"Zetasylum" was the name of our party

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Now, for the main attraction: we wanted to have a choir of singing pumpkins! This part was done almost entirely by the amazing Cal R. ’28, our chief handyman. Once we had the pumpkins arranged on some hay bales, Cal set up a hidden projector connected to a Mac mini running QLab.⁠03 Apparently this is a standard software used widely in theater productions From his iPad, he adjusted the projections to fit each pumpkin’s shape and position. Then, through preset animations, they were able to sing several Halloween classics. Check out this video of the pumpkins singing Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”!

To top off the exterior, we made spiderwebs out of white netting. Aside from the pumpkins, this was probably my favorite addition.

Cal testing the singing pumpkins

The fully-decorated exterior!

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On the inside, we replaced the first-floor lightbulbs with some cool flickering ones, then draped some black fabric across the ceiling. Near the entryway, we hung a white curtain and added fake bloodstains and bloody handprints.

Our basement setup, featuring a mural that I painted last year

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After all that hard work, the house was at last decorated and in full Halloween spirit. And then we had our party! I dressed up as Scooby-Doo (and by that I mean that I bought an oversized Scooby-Doo hoodie that I can and will wear outside of Halloween).

Dylan N. ’28 and me!

It’s been awesome seeing all the people, dressed up in their costumes, stopping to take pictures in front of our house. I love Halloween, with all the fright and creativity it brings out in people. I’m sad to see the end of Halloweekend and October in general. I haven’t watched nearly enough horror movies⁠04 Though I recently saw <em>You Can See Everything</em>, which for all intents and purposes <em>is</em> a horror movie for my liking.