ITMO activities

For many years, Halloween passed me by. In childhood, rituals like trick-or-treating and costume contests that look great in movies, seemed unnatural to a small Russian town. Later, it coincided with my friend’s birthday, and she didn’t want her special day to revolve around vampires and pumpkins. 

When I finally had the chance to get into the spooky spirit, I realized I had no idea how to do it. Thankfully, I work at ITMO, and we have it all covered :) So now I simply rely on the university and enjoy one of the organized events and strongly recommend this strategy to you all! Last year, I joined a heartwarming gathering for ITMO staff where we watched Halloween TV specials, from short Disney cartoons to a one-hour-long episode of Supernatural. This time, I’m looking forward to joining ITMO Family Speaking Club – to get into the atmosphere in the language it is usually celebrated in. – Elizaveta

Solving crimes

There is no need to turn to spine-chilling horrors! Personally, I think puzzles and crime-solving make for great Halloween activities – that’s why I have two options for my Halloween night. Option one: playing Nancy Drew and helping one of my favorite detectives solve a crime with an element of mystery – most often, someone’s trying to use the supernatural as a patsy, but we, of course, aren’t as easy to hoodwink and will get to the real culprit in the end. In every game, you are sure to get just the right amount of spooky to feel the tingle but not get scared, as well as find secret passages, play mini-games, and rack your brain around all kinds of puzzles.

Option two: finishing the latest season of Only Murders in the Building. The premise is self-explanatory: there is a building in New York that has a habit of turning into a crime scene, as well as an unlikely trio of a millennial and two older gentlemen who love true-crime podcasts and decide to start one of their own to find the murderer in their building. If that’s not fit for a Halloween binge-watch, then what is? – Catherine

Treats with a twist

Despite still not having the stomach to watch even The Sixth Sense till the very end, Halloween is one of the few holidays I have years’ standing traditions built around. With jump scares all around us, there’s one thing I can trust on this spooky night – and that’s food.

Sure thing, one of the non-negotiables of a great non-scary Halloween routine is having a themed feast, with eerily-shaped, spooky treats. The luck is, you can find them all around town or you can even make all the foods yourself, which will only add to the fun. As not much of a cooking person, I prefer to go on my Halloween treat hunts; I can always rely on finding skeleton-shaped Cheetos at stores, monster cupcakes and cookies at bakeries, and even any berry-based drink that can be called a bloody punch. And the best part is – you can eat it all ;) – Marina

Horrorcore beats

How do you make a scary movie less scary? By removing one of the senses, for starters. This is where my latest fixation comes in, and that is… horrorcore music. Old-school horrorcore is notorious for being excessively provocative and edgy, but I’m more partial to the grounded “fresh blood” (pun intended) of the genre.

Namely, this Halloween I’ll be putting on Visions of Bodies Being Burned, the 2020 record by clipping. – an experimental hip-hop trio with an incredible talent for building melodies of an entirely new kind. The tracks oscillate wonderfully from slightly ominous to run-for-your-life thrilling, all the while paying homage to classic slasher movies of the 90s. – Vadim