4 tips for Hallo-weenies this season

You know those people who go insane over Christmas decorations with billions of gaudy lights and baby-scaring sweaters? That’s how I feel about Halloween.

This obsession couldn’t have been avoided.

I grew up in farm country, which meant a lot of haunted hay rides and wicked bonfire celebrations. The Sleepy Hollow Bridge was 10 minutes away. The state’s largest haunted corn maze was one town over. My aunt converted her garage into a haunted house every year.

Halloween has become focused on fear.

It’s all about scaring people half to death.

You grab some friends and go to a haunted house for kicks. You arrange to ambush someone in a cemetery because you think it’ll be funny. You watch a “Halloween” marathon on TV.

I hate being scared.

I avoid haunted houses like the plague. To this day, I have never and will never watch a Michael Myers movie. There is nothing thrilling about thinking I’m being murdered by a mummy.

So yes, I am a Hallo-weenie. And I am a proud one.

And I know there are others out there like me who want to celebrate this spooky holiday without soiling their underwear.

There are four key aspects to consider for a scaredy cat-appropriate Halloween.

Location

Go home if possible. All campus has to offer are haunted houses and Halloween parties.

Movies
This part is essential.

I have a specific Halloween movie playlist I stick to, though this year I’m opening myself to some new ones.

Start with your basics: “Hocus Pocus” and “Halloweentown.” “Hocus Pocus” is awesome. Just accept it.

It’s only necessary to watch the first two “Halloweentown” movies. The other two were crap, and we all know it.

Kick it up a notch with “The Lost Boys.” Not actually about Halloween, but it has vampires and it’s from the 1980s, so it’s classic.“The Bride of Frankenstein” because, duh. “Sleepy Hollow” because Johnny Depp. And this year I’m having an Alfred Hitchcock marathon. We’ll see if I survive.

Food
If you don’t spend October getting fat off ghost-shaped sugar cookies and pumpkin seeds, I don’t understand what you’re doing with your life.

Activities
Carve a pumpkin.

Go on a normal hayride. Wind your way through a fright-less corn maze.

Have a bonfire and tell ghost stories. They usually don’t get too scary.

Go trick-or-treating.

If you’re ashamed of your age, take a younger sibling, cousin, neighbor, and dress up when you go. Don’t be that douchebag who thinks they’re too mature or too cool to put on a costume for a few hours.

We’re more likely to forgive you for putting glitter on your face and going as Edward Cullen than for not doing anything at all.

If for some reason your horrible friends drag you to anything haunted, all I can only offer two tips: groin kick and eye gouge.

Then you tear your way to safety like a bat out of hell and plot your revenge for April Fool’s Day.

It’s going to be okay, Hallo-weenies. With some common sense and Netflix we’ll get through this month in a descent mental state.

— lnbanks@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Lexia Banks on Twitter @LexiaBanks.