I was wowed last year at the Nick School Halloween Party -- by how impressive the costumes were but also by the fact that every single person was wearing one. Very few duds in Nick School student costumes. This year was no exception for the 5 hour shindig in the Duke Forest near the Lemur Center which featured dancing, games, a bonfire, a best costume contest, and plenty of all-around carrying-on. Attached are a few pix.






A few days later on the actual day of Halloween, the main attraction is Franklin Street in nearby Chapel Hill. If the Nick School Halloween party takes quality and does a good job at it, the Franklin Street Halloween event grabs quantity and runs with it. I went to undergrad at Georgetown in DC which was also well-known for it's large Halloween celebration down on M Street (which always seemed hampered by all the police-ribbon and pushing). There was also the annual drag-queen race in DuPont, which is always an event. I've also lived in San Francisco, where the Castro was the annual site for Halloween mayhem. After the shootings that injured 9 last year, this year's celebration was rumored to be very quiet. Chapel Hill, on the other hand, is truly an ocean of mostly-costumed revelers for nearly ten blocks on Franklin Street. I was impressed this year by the large number of families present and overall diversity of the crowd. Everyone seemed to be getting into it...it being mostly cheering each other on, gawking at each other and lots of posing and pictures. Although Wikipedia claims New York to have the world's largest Halloween celebration, Chapel Hill's is the best I've personally seen.