Pumpkins, ghouls, and monsters, oh my!
The minute I open the door to the staircase, I can’t help the grin that spreads over my face. As I walk through the dining hall, I’m bathed in the green atmospheric lighting, find myself subconsciously bopping my head along to the spooky tunes, and admire the spider web and pumpkin decorations that have been placed around Shea for the Halloween party.
At first there’s only a few of us, but it doesn’t take long for the others to arrive, more and more people begin to fill Shea, each of them wrapped within the scariest—or cleverest!—costumes. I wander slowly around the tables that people have seated themselves at, observing a card game no one’s quite sure of the name or the rules of at one table, Mahjong at another, and Uno at one more. It’s this last table that I choose to sit at, pulling out a chair with one hand as my other snags one of the many pieces of candy lying around. I peel back the wrapper and bite into the chocolate, then wave my hand to be dealt in. It doesn’t take long before I somehow seem to have half of the deck in my hand, but my smile is too wide for me to truly care.
As the games wrap up, Kaili taps loudly on the karaoke microphone, pulling our attention towards the main event of this party: the monster competition.
The first “monster” is Danner (ASL) who’s dressed up as Bigfoot, then we have Julia (Chinese) as the nine-tailed fox, then Styx (German) as the witch from Hansel and Gretel, and finally Tyler (Japanese) as the kappa. After a round of introductions, each of these monsters teaches us how to say “Happy Halloween” in their language, some of which we can copy, and others which we simply laugh at and leave to the experts. They then show off their talent, which ranges from weird flexibility to the ability to “steal children.” Finally, these monsters give us their best monster sound. There’s also a wide range within this criteria, from Styx’s scarily accurate witch’s cackle to Tyler’s squeaky “kappa kappa!” At the end of it all, our applause echoes around the walls of the dining hall, the loudest of which is for Tyler, the wonderful kappa, who gives a teary eyed acceptance speech “to Japan” before sitting back down with the rest of us.
And then, it’s time for the cake!
As it’s brought out, “Happy Shea-lloween” written in red icing on its surface, I put down my pen, set aside my writing. This is a party, after all. I only write down one more thing before I rejoin the others:
Happy Halloween!
Written by Chloe Ross ‘26