Halloween (Up)town: What goes on during Halloween at Miami

For some, a normal weekend at Miami University consists of partying at the Uptown bars and sometimes drinking, but last Thursday night was different. Students still hit the bars and participated in other fun events, but this time in their Halloween costumes.

Halloween night was far from balmy. The temperature dropped throughout the day, and the wind was so strong that students couldn’t feel their faces. There was snow falling from the sky.

But unlike the temperature outside, the Halloween spirit was high. Girls still ran to the bars in mini skirts, and guys still sported their jerseys.

First-years Jenna Watterson and Raychel Avila were dressed up as Velma from “Scooby Doo” and Karen Smith as a mouse from “Mean Girls,” respectively.

“I’m a mouse, duh,” she said, quoting the iconic chick-flick.

Avila also mentioned her favorite childhood Halloween memory.

“When I was in the sixth grade, me and my only friend, my best friend, sat in one chair and passed out candy at my house,” Avila said. “Our English teacher said, ‘Are you a two headed monster,’ and we weren’t but we said, ‘Yeah.’”

Students Clare DiCuccio and Caroline Rothlisberger were dressed in bell bottom jeans and tinted circular sunglasses, showing off the 70s aesthetic. Although their costumes worked great for the spooky evening, their favorite holidays are Earth Day and International Women’s Day.

Sophomore Nicole Van Gorp painted half her face to appear as a jack o’lantern. It was her first year experimenting with face paint for Halloween.

Her friends Sydney Hoffman and Anna Hofferberth were also with her. Hoffman dressed as the devil and Hofferberth was the Theatre Thug from the show “Drake and Josh.”

Last year, Van Gorp was a first-year student at Ohio University but still came to Miami to celebrate Halloween with her friends. She then transferred to Miami to start her sophomore year.

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Senior Delaney Sherman and her two sorority sisters from Alpha Epsilon Phi, Jasmine Denofsky and Heather Steeby, helped pass out water bottles. They stood at a corner across the street from Brick Street Bar and offered water bottles to students passing by so they didn’t get dehydrated.

Denofsky was a panda and Steeby was a unicorn. Sherman wasn’t wearing a costume, but she mentioned that she has a Coraline costume, which is her favorite Halloween movie.

Some of their favorite Halloween candies are Milky Ways and Hershey’s Chocolate, and Sherman’s best Halloween memory was dumping out and combining all the candy her and her siblings got from trick-or-treating.

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In the Armstrong Student Center, first-year Autumn Marshall enjoyed the provided screening of the movie “Us” dressed as Post Malone. She replicated his tattoos and braided her hair.

Marshall is very passionate about any type of sour candy, but especially Warheads.

“I like to take a lot of them and put them in my mouth and see how long I can hold them in for,” Marshall said.

Post Malone wasn’t the only costume that allowed students to try out some fake tattoos for the night. First-year Nicole Valencia put on an orange jumpsuit and fake tattoos to make herself appear as a prisoner.

Her favorite candy is nerds and her favorite movie is “Halloweentown” because of how much she watched it as a kid.

Arianna Fix celebrated a part of her Halloween night in Pulley’s Diner, ordering a cheeseburger and fries in a panda onesie. Her favorite Halloween movie is also “Halloweentown,” and her fondest memory of Halloween was when she scared younger children in her neighborhood with a zombie costume.

“I dressed up as a zombie and I had one of my friends who does really realistic makeup art do wounds, so I looked like I had actual wounds,” Fix said. “We took a backpack through a woods area, and there were a couple of little kids with an older babysitter. And when we came out, I decided to do the really mean thing of acting like a zombie and trying to attack them. They screamed so loud and ran off. It was brilliant.”

The spark of Halloween festivities even reached students who live off-campus.

Sophomore Kyle Hench dressed up as Batman, and his friends dressed up as other superheroes. Hench’s favorite Halloween candy is Snickers and his favorite Halloween movie is the ever-popular “Halloweentown.”

His favorite memory of Halloween back at home was trick-or-treating, even if he just passed out candy. And his favorite part of this year’s Halloween celebration was eating a lot of candy.

“At my house, with all my friends, we played this game where we had a large bowl of candy in the middle,” Hench said. “We basically just had a buffet of candy.”

Like every year, Halloween was a huge deal at Miami, full of fun events and celebrations throughout the night. Whether students were on-campus or roaming the streets of Oxford, everyone got a chance to get into the spooky spirit.

“It was better than I expected,” first-year Jenna Watterson said.

Tally/Roundup: