With spooky season in full swing, the members of The Hoot’s Editorial Board are giving our thoughts on the worst Halloween costumes we’ve ever donned. Do you agree with our choices? Disagree? Read on to find out!
Cooper: The year I was a surfer dude
One time, when I was in middle school, I dressed up as a surfer for Halloween. Pretty tame choice, but I chose to bring a boogie board with me as my candy bag. I duct-taped a plastic shopping bag to a boogie board, which I then velcro-strapped to my wrist, and dragged it all over the streets as I went trick-or-treating. I hated carrying that thing around, but if I had it my way that wouldn’t have been the worst part of my costume. A little voice in my head told me to wear a bathing suit and a swim shirt, because that’s what surfers do. That night, it was 20 degrees. I did not have a fun time that year: I was forced to wear sweatpants that totally didn’t go with my costume (thanks for not letting me freeze, mom) and lug around a slab of foam the whole night. Not my best work.
Victoria: BEEware of costume choices
You know those Instagram pages where moms dress their kids up in aesthetic Halloween costumes? You have babies dressed as pumpkins or Dalmatians and the photos are picture-perfect. Then you have my childhood costumes. My mom started off strong with a cow costume for my first Halloween. But it gets worse from there. I was not a pumpkin or a cat. No, no. She dressed me as a bee. It was a pretty terrible costume. It is only made more ironic by the fact that I am very much allergic to bees. In fact, bees may be my biggest fear. I don’t care whether I’m bigger than them, they’re scary and I stand by it. The only photos of me in this costume are of me crying so I can only assume two-year-old me hated it too. I guess I was just terrified of myself for a day.
Mia: My mom is not crafty, but definitely tried to be
Growing up my mom tried her best to put my sister and I in cute costumes that kept us warm in the late October New Hampshire air, but oftentimes this led her to pull out a hot glue gun and throw something together. Admittedly, I think every costume she put us in was super cute, but maybe a bit all-over-the-place. I don’t have a photo of this one—and wouldn’t put it in the paper even if I did—but one year my sister and I were Dorothy and Toto from “The Wizard of Oz.” My sister in a cute Dorothy costume with some alterations to make it warmer, and me covered head to toe in a furry black onesie that my mom pulled together. Earlier in life, I had the cutest costumes, which I will share here, including being a duck (insanely adorable) and a cowgirl. It’s interesting to think how Halloween changes but stays fun for similar reasons as you grow older. Then, I wanted to be adorable and collect candy. Now, I want to be horrifying but also hot.
Cyrenity: N/A
So, I actually wasn’t allowed to celebrate Halloween growing up. So no trick-or-treating, and no costumes. It got to a point where I would have to make up that my school uniform was a costume so that I wasn’t totally left out. It’s as sad as it sounds, yes. So, coming in as both my best and worst Halloween costume—an Atlanta Girls’ School student. Ta-da…
Natasha: The middle school nightmare
You couldn’t waterboard this information out of me, but here I am baring my darkest moments. If you remember life in 2015-2018, you might remember a band named Twenty One Pilots who, in short, being a fan of was my entire personality throughout middle school and parts of high school. Their 2015 album, “Blurryface,” was my entrance into the fandom and that Halloween I dressed up as the titular “Blurryface” (for reference, it was similar to what the lead singer Tyler Joseph wore in the “Stressed Out” music video). I bought the red beanie from the band store and wore the emo getup alongside it. Looking back on it, that was my worst costume. Not because it aged particularly badly, but because who wants to reminisce about middle school, undeniably the most embarrassing period of all of our lives?
Thomas: To infinity and every doorjamb within a 20-mile radius
I have to applaud my father when Halloween comes around. Every Halloween he would hand-make myself and my brother new costumes that he made entirely from materials from around the house or from Joann Fabrics. The idea was simple: save money by using his ability to sew to make our costumes. Well one year I wanted to be Buzz Lightyear, and darn it did my dad deliver. Everything from the wings to the buttons he was able to make on his own with cardboard, tape and a few good sews. The issue was never the costume or the design however, the issue when it came to this costume was me! The Buzz Lightyear wings felt like they were a part of me and became something I will resent for the rest of my life—I became one of those kids who made their costume their personality for the two months after Halloween. I wore those wings everywhere, but what I did not have was spacial awareness. I would jam my wings into every doorjamb like the Three Stooges until one day they broke and my identity along with them. So my worst memory is not of my costume as a child but rather of what the costume made me!
Maddie: The growing pains of matching costumes
The one time being a triplet came in handy for my parents was Halloween: there was an endless amount of three-person costumes available for them to choose from. Most are just fine for little kids; we were a pumpkin patch for our first Halloween out of the hospital, and I was Baby Bear at age three. But as we got older, we stopped coordinating our costumes, until age 10. For some reason, we chose Things 1, 2 and 3 for our grand return to a group costume; I was Thing 2. However, that did not matter much, as we were all dressed nearly identically in red turtlenecks, velour sweatpants and fuzzy slippers, wearing bright blue bobbed wigs on our heads. Now, at first read this may seem like a nice comfy costume—which it was. The problem came when we had to wear these outfits to our school’s annual costume contest, where children walked half-heartedly around the gymnasium until winners were selected (we might have even won the group costume prize, though I’m sure I found that embarrassing too). The last thing I wanted to be doing at age 10 was rock an electric blue wig that kept sliding around and showing some of my hair underneath. Why couldn’t I be a cute and sassy devil like my friend was? I suddenly regretted our textually inaccurate Dr. Seuss reference that now seemed childish, and that was the last time my sisters and I matched on Halloween.
Rachel: Caught in “Bad Romance”
When I was younger, I wanted to be as creative as possible with my costumes. I was not going to go with your average Party City or Spirit Halloween costume. I had to be different. Shout out to my sixth-grade costume where I was a zombie traffic light. Definitely my best costume, but I was not going to talk about halloween costumes without mentioning that. I was a little baby weirdo. The problem was, sometimes my ideas were bigger than what I could do. When I was in fourth grade, I thought it would be fun to be Lady Gaga. Was I a huge Lady Gaga fan? Not particularly. She was popular and iconic, but I would not call myself a Little Monster. Regardless, I decided that had to be my costume. I wanted this to look super cool and out of the box, but I did not have the materials to pull that off. I bought this huge long blonde wig that absolutely drowned my head. It didn’t look that much like Gaga, but I guess more than my normal hair. I wore a lot of dark lipstick for that dramatic musician look. Then I picked some dazzling clothes from my closet that probably looked more like an elementary schooler than a pop star. I thought I looked cool at the time; looking back it was not that great. I might try this again one day, but I now have the memory of my worst holiday costume due to mediocre execution.
Jenny: First time doing makeup was disastrous
I feel awkward here because everyone else is talking about their Halloween costumes when they were little. My most memorable costume happened in eighth grade when I was old enough to be ashamed of it. I was Nico from the anime “LoveLive!” (not sure if people still watch it now) and it was my first time doing makeup in my entire life. Middle school Jenny did not know what to put on my face at all, so I ended up going to Target and getting some random stuff. There were no YouTube tutorials back then that taught people how to do makeup, so I had to figure out everything on my own. I guess I wanted to look cute, but my eyeliner was literally black circles around my eyes. I also forgot to buy a brow pencil so I used eyeliner to draw my eyebrows. My eyes ended up looking like someone just smashed on them and it was great.
Justin: Bah Humbug
I personally do not like Halloween.
Roshni: Arrrgh!
This was my worst Halloween at the moment, but in retrospect, it was pretty dope. I was going through my Disney princess phase at the ripe age of five and my dear mother decided that I wasn’t going to be ~like other girls~. She bought me a pirate costume instead—an oddly realistic pirate costume. So alongside the princesses, pumpkins, animals and cartoons I was a sea-criminal with a sailor’s mouth. Looking back though, the wee hat served.
