Communities celebrate Halloween on the last day of October every year, and the Lawrence community partakes in the holiday in a variety of ways.

Prescott Deckinger | Multimedia Journalist

“I plan to take my kids trick-or-treating,” Carla Hyen, a Lawrence resident, said. 

“I’ll probably just sit back and watch a really scary movie,” Lisa Barlow, a Lawrence resident, said. 

“I’m going to dress up as the Brady Bunch with some of my friends and go to some neighborhood parties,” Mason Ulrich, a Lawrence resident, said. 

Every Lawrence resident partakes in Halloween festivities in different ways, whether they’re kicking back to watch a horror movie or dressing up as fictional characters, but do they know the origins of the spooky holiday? 

Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, according to history.com,  when people would light bonfires and don costumes to ward off ghosts. 

The festival commemorated the end of the harvest season and the blurring of the physical and spiritual worlds. 

The ancient Celts believed that spirits roamed the earth, and to avoid being recognized by the malicious beings, would wear costumes, hoping to evade harm. 

That practice evolved to the modern day, and Oct. 31 is now filled with activities such as trick-or-treating, carving jack-o’-lanterns, and eating bowlfuls of candy. 

Students on campus had their own ideas on how the holiday began. 

“Maybe some people dressed up and started handing out candy and scaring people for fun and it kind of just stuck,” Connor Neven, a senior at KU, said. 

“I think kids just really wanted candy and told their parents they’d do tricks to get their favorite treats,” Riley Nelson, a freshman at KU, said. 

“I think Halloween was created as an excuse for people to scare the living daylights out of their friends,” Paris Chelling, a junior at KU, said. 

Even though students’ theories about Halloween’s inception didn’t hit the mark, it won’t prevent them from celebrating the fright-filled holiday.