upworthy

halloween

Popular

Woman describes how Gen X did Halloween in the 80s and it’s so accurate

"Every single member of Gen X can smell this photo."

Photo credit: ~ tOkKa/Flickr

Halloween costumes in the 80s were terrifyingly terrible.

Halloween has come a long way since the 70s and 80s, when Gen X kids donned the worst mass-produced costumes known to man to go out and ask strangers for candy that we were sure was laced with poison or razor blades. Those sure were good times, though, weren't they?

Social media creator Kelly Manno shared a video describing what Halloween was like for kids who grew up in "the forgotten generation," and holy moly is it accurate.


First, Manno showed a photo of someone dressed in an "80s costume" for Halloween, with neon colors and legwarmers and big hair, and said, "Absolutely nobody looked like that in the 80s, especially on Halloween. We looked like this."

Then she showed a grainy photo of kids in the plastic masks and poorly printed costumes that were the hallmark of the age.

"Every single member of Gen X can smell this photo," she said. "It's like a vinyl, like plasticky paint smell."


Manno explained that our parents only took a few photos of us per year, and Halloween was always one of them.

"You knew, before you went out trick-or-treating, that you had to line up with your cousins in front of the fireplace, in your highly flammable costumes, with your mom chain-smoking Virginia Slims, like, 'Say trick-or-treat!'"

Oh, those masks were the worst inventions ever. The eyeholes never lined up properly, so you were constantly trying to adjust them to be able to see even a little bit. "We would push our tongue through the slit in the mask. It would cut our tongue, but then we'd keep doing it again because we were eaten up with OCD and ADD and nobody cared."

Then Manno described the "garbage bag costumes" we had, which were basically trash bags printed with whatever character it was supposed to be. So janky. So sweaty. So crinkly when we walked. But somehow still socially preferable to your mom making your costume from scratch.


"Look at us, we were terrifying," Manno concludes. "No wonder people tried to poison us."

Her descriptions of what it felt like to trick-or-treat in those costumes and haul our own bodyweight in candy are spot on, and people who lived it are feeling the nostalgia.

"So much truth in one video! 😂 I just saw, heard, and smelled my childhood."

"You are literally making me laugh so damn hard, cause you described it exactly as it was, but my mom smoked Winston's!"

"It was always freezing on Halloween that the vinyl/plastic suit would crack and tear halfway through the night."

"Or the rubber band breaking at the second house and you had to hold it up on your face at the door the rest of the night. 😂 Good times."

"The tongue thing is on point. I can still feel it. 😂"

"I can totally smell that picture lol. I remember the steam from inside the mask would have your lashes and eyebrows covered in dew then after a couple streets of running house to house the crotch would tear out. We would stay out until everybody turned their lights off and the pillow case was full."

"Yes!!!! And we used a pillow case for our candy. And no adult supervision."

"My mom made me really nice homemade costumes, but I remember begging for the plastic Strawberry Shortcake garbage bag one. So, she bought it for me one year. That was a terrible, sweaty experience. 😂"

"Let’s not forget having to inspect every piece of candy for razor blades. I swear I lost half my haul to my father in that clean up. 🍬 🍫 😢"

Kids these days have no idea, with their official city trick-or-treat hours and their parents walking around with them and their costumes that actually look like the thing they're trying to be. The 70s and 80s were a wild time, and as funny as it is to reminisce about those Halloweens of old, most of us would agree that the experience has been much improved for our own kids.

Pillowcases still make the best trick-or-treat bags, though. Some things do not change.

Internet

Two sisters go viral for their ridiculously functional roller coaster costume

The screams and synchronized movements really help sell the whole experience.

Sisters go viral for realistic roller coaster costume

Spooky season can be a fun time of year for people. There are folks that wait all year for the official start of fall just to decorate for Halloween. Costumes are bought in advance and bags of candy are purchased and stored, but not everyone buys their costume. Some spooky season lovers get really creative with their Halloween costumes out of household items.

There are some homemade costumes that are so funny and realistic that you have to do a double take. Two sisters are going viral for their ultra realistic roller coaster costume made out of cardboard and foam noodles. But it's not just their costumes that are stealing the attention of millions, it's their acting skills.

In the video uploaded to TikTok by Laurie Dabbs-Gayton, the sisters stand side-by-side, though it looks like their sitting. They begin to shake and jostle as if they're on a track before screaming like they've just rounded a bend or flew down a hill quickly.


The pair is in total sync with each other adding to the realistic vibe of their costume for their employer's costume party. It was so convincing that people watching the video were confused at first thinking it was a coin operated ride. Commenters didn't realize it was a costume until the women stood up fully.

"I thought it was a mini roller coaster," one person writes followed by multiple rolling crying laughing emojis.

"Took my brain a few extra seconds to process what my eyes were seeing," a commenter says.

"I thought for a second it was like the pony ride machines outside a grocery store," someone admits.

"It took me far longer to figure out than it should have," one woman writes.

Watch the fantastic combination of acting skill and costume design below:

This article originally appeared on 10.31.23

Woman's sleep walking habits has people in tears from laughter

Let's be honest, most folks have no idea what they're doing in their sleep. Unless you're tossing and turning, you're blissfully unconscious for approximately six to eight hours if you're lucky. You have no clue if you stole the covers from your partner to wrap up like a human burrito or if you sat up abruptly to do the Macarena because you were dreaming of dancing at a friend's wedding.

Most people are likely doing nothing more exciting that snoring, drooling or accidentally backhanding their partner if they have one. There are some people that become chatter boxes when they're sleeping whether its coherent sentences or jumbled nonsense. But there are those rare ones that not only want to chit chat while they snooze but get up to do things that they may consider strange.


A woman that goes by the name Celina SpookyBoo on TikTok recently posted a video of her own sleepwalking shenanigans and commenters can't get enough.

In the video that has racked up over 28 million views, Celina sits up in bed with her eyes wide open while being recorded with a night vision camera. "There's goats. There's seven goats," she says before getting completely out of bed and doing what appears to be some sort of Irish jig. Celina says several random phrases before laying down on a storage bench at the foot of her bed and saying, "I'll have a grilled cheese, it's fine."

So many questions. Is she cooking the grilled cheese on the storage bench? Is someone else making her the tasty snack in her dream? It doesn't stop there. At one point she appears to almost be acting out the famous scene from Hamlet before appearing from the door way to declare, "I am Chris Hanson." You know, the guy from Dateline and To Catch a Predator. Commenters were amused by the random sleep walking activities.

"The little Irish step dancing is KILLING me," someone writes with a laughing emoji.

"IMAGINE WAKING UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND YOU SEE SOMEONE STANDING COMPLETELY STILL AND THEY JUST SAY "It was the 11th of December," one commenter says.

"How do you make so much sense and so little sense at the same time," another person writes with a crying emoji.

Watch the entirely not weird at all sleep walking incident below:

Family

Mom wants to know when Halloween became 'an adult pub crawl'?

"Have parents always done this, and they're just being more public about it now?”

Celeste Yvonne had a recent Halloween realization.

Celeste Yvonne, a certified recovery coach and a founding host of the Sober Mom Squad, had a Halloween realization and wanted to know if she was the only person who felt the same.

“This morning, I'm listening to parents at the school drop-off area talk about how they will be bringing a keg onto their golf carts when they do the trick-or-treating rounds with their kids this year,” Yvonne says in a viral TikTok video.

“I'm not shaming them, but my question is: when did trick-or-treating become a beer crawl or pub crawl for adults?” she asked. “This is a newer phenomenon, isn't it? Or have parents always done this, and they're just being more public about it now?”


“I mean, even now, you can go up to a house doorway, and they will have candy for the kids or adult drinks for the adults. I never saw that growing up trick-or-treating,” Yvonne added. “Is this a newer phenomenon as a result of mommy wine culture or just the normalization of alcohol in general?”

@theultimatemomchallenge

#mommywineculture #halloween

The answer could be that drinking is a lot more visible during the holiday because the number of adults who celebrate is on the rise. At the same time, there has been a rise in alcohol consumption among older adults, where we now drink about the same amount as we did in the pre-Civil War era.

Interestingly, at the same time, there has been a decline in drinking among younger people.

In the comments, many noted that we didn’t see parents drinking during trick-or-treating in the past because kids used to go out with their older friends or siblings. “In the ‘80s, our parents let us go on our own. They stayed home and did what they wanted or at least in my town,” Leigh Winchester Fle wrote. “Gen Xer here, my boomer parents just sent us out and stayed behind and boozed. Now I think our generation tags along and take roadies,” Uncle Rico added.