Why We Like Bring Creeped Out on Halloween
All Hallows' Eve is much more than a day for dressing up and eating candy.
Posted October 27, 2025 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
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:
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.
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.
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.
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Who Protests, What Do They Protest, and Why? IZA Institute of Labor Economics. Nov 2022. E. Chenoweth, et al. Proximate and ultimate causes of supernatural beliefs. Front. Psychol., November 2022. M. Van Elk.
Samuel, Lawrence R. (2011). Supernatural America: A Cultural History. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
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Lawrence R. Samuel, Ph.D. , is an American cultural historian who holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and was a Smithsonian Institution Fellow.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.