It’s coming to that time of year again where you have to shoo away an endless deluge of costumed kids, teenagers and people who are just plain too old. Whether you’re too old for Halloween or not, you’ll probably still be invited to some kind of gathering or another, as these things seem to be unavoidable, these days. You can expect everyone to wear the same tired, old predictable costumes, year after year after year. Red-horned devils with pitchforks, witches, skeletons, zombies, vampires and even things that aren’t really scary like fairies and Disney characters seem to be popular these days. When I went to volunteer in Guatemala, I discovered how much they love this time of year and the great, creative Halloween costume ideas that they came up with. Here’s a few ideas:

Heeeeere’s Johnny!

Everyone’s favourite scene from The Shining brought to life. Too bad this one only really works if you’re male; mess your hair up crazy-style, stop shaving for a while, get a light sheet of wood and smash your head through it and carry a hatchet. If people flee in terror in your arrival at the party, then you know you’ve done a great job. Did you know that the line was never in the original script? Jack Nickolson just blurted it out spontaneously (it was a line from a popular game show at the time) and it scared the bejaysus out of everyone.

Ultra Low-Budget Costume Idea

Here’s one for the tight-fisted students: get some plastic carrier bags from your local, economy supermarket and push your legs through the bottom of one of them, pulling it up around your crotch and sliding your arms through the handles to wear it like a leotard. Now that you’ve done that, find a picture of one of the supermarket’s own budget-brand labels and edit it to read “Halloween Costume” as the product, print it off and stick it on the front of your costume. For example, it might read “Tesco Value Halloween Costume. Very Frightening Indeed. Best before 31/10/11.” The more accurately it resembles the actual supermarket brand, the better.

I’ll be heading back to volunteer in Latin America for this coming Halloween, and I’ll be looking forward to checking out what great costume ideas that people have there this time around!