Why We Like Bring Creeped Out on Halloween

Halloween in America is believed to be a descendant of the Celtic harvest festival that was also designed to remember the dead and ward off ghosts. How did a pagan ritual become a month-long celebration of spookiness in the 21st century?

There are several good psychological and sociological reasons to explain the enormous popularity of the modern-day phenomenon that is Halloween. I argue that the holiday serves important roles in American society that are hidden within the festivities:

1. Venting fears of the unknown. Americans, like members of most other cultures, share fears of what may reside in our known, natural universe. Humans find ways to channel, contain, and ideally overcome these collective fears into socially acceptable forms. Halloween, like scary movies and television shows, serves this purpose by our construction of artificial threatening scenarios.

The turning of devils, witches, goblins, and other unearthly entities into welcome, friendly sights is thus a kind of annual ritual to manage our anxieties. By simulating fear, we can enjoy the experience of being afraid. Costumes reinforce the experience as imagined—a form of play or theatrical event, with candy that sweetens the deal.

2. Acknowledgement of death. Death is a taboo subject in Western society, as many of us deny or repress that we will disappear one day. By making death fun through skeletons, ghosts, zombies, graveyards, or other forms of post-life, Halloween is an opportunity to bring death out into the open, helping to defuse some of the trepidation that surrounds it. The holiday thus has a cathartic effect, serving as an all-too-rare recognition of the fundamental existential dilemma that we are born to die.

Haunted house experiences are quite popular; they allow visitors to pretend to dwell among the dead, physically. Creepy houses make an ideal setting to create interactive, three-dimensional stage sets designed to elevate the fright factor, which is precisely the point. Not just haunted houses, but scare zones and scream parks litter cities across the country to freak out both kids and adults—happily.

3. Disruption of social order. Like Mardi Gras for Christians, Halloween represents a singular occasion to turn things upside down by engaging in activities that run counter to social norms (many of them hedonistic). Americans have designated Halloween as an event in which we’re permitted to take on different, maybe secret personas to let our fantasies run free. It’s also the only time for children to take charge, rhetorically; this is another reversal of the structure that guides our behavior.
4. Defy logic. Humans have, throughout history, demonstrated an innate desire to experience phenomena that defy logic and rationalism. Halloween is a wholly (but not holy!) analog experience that our primal, reptilian brain finds very satisfying. It is thus not coincidental that the holiday has been extended and grown in intensity as the digital world advances into more and more daily nooks and crannies.
5. Community during civic decline. Halloween operates most powerfully at the local level, where neighbors can interact in a public setting. We are social creatures and crave interaction with others, but we’ve become increasingly disconnected through social and technological means. On what other occasion do we open the doors to our houses to strangers, much less give them Snickers and Skittles? In years past, Christmas served this function through caroling and block parties, but over-the-top commercialism has largely squashed the communal nature of that holiday.

Marketers have likely not decoded Halloween in this manner, but have successfully leveraged humans’ hard-wiring for the supernatural, our need to belong to something bigger than ourselves, and to circumvent rational thought, occasionally. Americans spent roughly $11.6 billion during the 2024 Halloween season, according to the National Retail Federation, which is about the gross national income of Somalia. Trick or treat.