Things to do on Halloween besides parties

I’m in college and too old to trick-or-treat, but I’m autistic and even if I went to a party I’d be miserable. Since I moved out, I live in a building where I won’t get trick-or-treaters. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do for Halloween this year, do you have any advice?

realsocialskills said:

There are several things you can do on/for Halloween that don’t involve parties or trick or treating. I don’t know what kind of stuff you like, so here are some things:

Pumpkin carving:

  • You can carve pumpkins (most grocery stores in the US sell pumpkins suitable for jack-o-lanterns this time of year)
  • You can use them as decorations, even if there are no trick-or-treaters
  • You can also enter a pumpkin carving contest
  • (There may be some that adults are allowed to enter in your area; there are also some that take place online such as this one.)

Fandom:

  • You can read Halloween fanfic. AO3 has a Halloween tag.
  • You can also write Halloween-related fic or make art.
  • That can be a good way to be part of a community doing Halloween (and can be fun even if it’s not a community thing for you)

Arts and crafts:

  • If you like to make things, you might make some Halloween things
  • Craft stores have a lot of Halloween-related supplies, projects, and suggestions this time of year
  • If you want some ideas, browsing a craft store might help
  • You can also just make orange things, or orange and black things
  • Or things involving ghosts or black cats
  • You can also post pictures of what you make on Tumblr/Pintrest/other places

Sensory activities:

  • If you google “sensory activities” or “sensory play”, you get a lot of instructions for making fun things to stim with
  • Most of them are created by parents or therapists for kids
  • There are a *lot* of holiday-themed sensory activities/play
  • Here is a page with some Halloween suggestions

Food:

  • If you like to cook, there are a lot of Halloween recipes. Here’s the allrecipes.com Halloween page.
  • You can also make pumpkin pie (or other pumpkin things)
  • If you don’t want to or can’t cook, stores have a lot of Halloween-themed food
  • You can get Halloween candy, or cookies, or cakes, or any number of other things.

Watching movies or TV shows:

  • A lot of shows have Halloween episodes
  • One classic Halloween episode is “It’s the great pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”
  • Halloween episodes aside, some people enjoy watching horror movies on Halloween.
  • There are also some Halloween movies that aren’t horror movies. One excellent one is The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Reading scary/ghost stories:

  • Some people like to read scary stories or ghost stories on Halloween
  • If you like that sort of thing, Project Gutenberg has a ton of stories by Edgar Allen Poe, almost all of which are scary or creepy.
  • (There are also non-scary ghost stories, but I don’t know where to find them offhand).

Hosting a gathering that you’d enjoy:

  • Even if you don’t like parties, you still might like to be around a few other people.
  • Maybe having dinner together
  • Or baking cookies together
  • Or watching a movie