The moment I feel the cold breeze on a cloudy day in October, I cannot help but wish my obligations away to enjoy what is arguably the best month of the year.
In the spirit of this great season, here are three Halloween activities that have given me core memories throughout the years.
Stock up at Spirit Halloween (or any costume and décor store)
Halloween decorations and costumes are always the name of the game for the season. My memories of trick-or-treating as a kid may not have all lasted. However, what I wore and the decorations of the neighborhood houses have always stuck with me.
Having my own apartment has made coming up with the best decorations of the apartment building into a competition. This is where the Halloween shopping comes in.
Of course, many of us have been to a Spirit Halloween in our day, but if it has been a few years, a return trip is certainly overdue. In my experience, everything from decorations and graphic t-shirts to inflatable Eric Cartman suits can be found, making a trip to Spirit Halloween a beautiful experience.
You do not have to go all out during your Halloween shopping spree to give your space a Halloween feel, either. Simple skeletons in the window or on the balcony could do the trick, or even something like the viral Target Jack-O-Lantern decoration that gained fame this year for the line “I am NOT a Jack-O-Lantern. My name is Lewis.” Even these small touches add so much to a living space.
Not only does decorating and shopping for décor add to the Halloween experience, it also brings about a sense of excitement for the fall season as a whole.
Play horror games
Playing horror video games is one of the best ways to go about celebrating Halloween. A huge part of my love for Halloween comes from how unique and creative people can be with emphasizing people’s fear of the unknown. Video games and movies are great at this, but video games are able to take special advantage here. 
I would like to highlight the video game “Little Nightmares.” “Little Nightmares” is a short indie horror game about a little girl’s journey to escape a ship known only as The Maw. In this journey, the player gets chased by decrepit villains in a grainy and seemingly never-ending ship.
In a review of “Little Nightmares,” Jeff Cork of Gameinformer described the game’s aesthetics.
“Little Nightmares isn’t a horror game in a traditional sense, but it’s filled with horrifying imagery and some of the most wretched sights I’ve seen in a long time,” Cork wrote.
No game I have ever played has made me feel more uneasy and uncertain through the fear of the unknown as “Little Nightmares” did.
Horror games such as “Little Nightmares” and hundreds of others truly encapsulate a rainy-day horror vibe that I cannot help but connect to fall and the Halloween season. 
Watch horror movies
Horror movies are always an acceptable genre to watch, but for me, it is the only genre of film to watch during the month of October. In league with the aforementioned video game, there are two films I love to watch this time of year that cater to the fear of the unknown.
John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982) is one of my favorite horror movies, and it seems to fall under many people’s radars. In the movie, an alien being on Earth kills to become a near-identical copy of its victims. The alien infiltrates an installation in Antarctica, leaving the men there to figure out what is happening and what they have to do.
“The Thing” is a beautiful movie that bases its horror on what the movie does not tell you, but it is never unnecessary for information to be kept from you. The movie’s point-of-view is from the crew, so whatever the crew believes is what you know. It is also a rare case where closure is reached through unknowns, but that concept could only be fully explained with a watch of the movie.
Another movie worth the watch is Netflix’s short anthology film, “The House” (2022). This film contains three shorter films within it. The first of these films is titled “And Heard Within a Lie is Spun.” This first mini film is by far the best of the three, and it is one of the most unsettling films I have seen in a while.
“And Heard Within a Lie is Spun” is stop-motion animated. This is one aspect adding to its fear factor, but the dolls this film is animated with are also made of cloth with very small faces, adding the film’s unsettling effect. Being only 30 minutes long, this film introduces an unknown force and has as much fun as possible with it without giving away any details.
There are plenty of horror movies that have these same effects, but this time of year makes me run back to these two in particular at full speed.
Among others, these are some of my favorite ways to get into the Halloween spirit. As the leaves begin to fall and the breeze grows colder, these are just a few things that keep me sane through this season.