On Festivities
This is just my costume
In March 2026, Zach and Evey were visiting SLO, my hometown, and somewhere between cocktails and amazing food we realized that Halloween 2026 was going to land on a Saturday. The next Saturday Halloween wouldn’t be for another 11 years.
By then we’ll be in our mid-40s, hopefully still exploring the world, albeit with a lot more Liquid I.V. and ibuprofen in our bags. Halloween is all of our favorite holiday, so after we mentally digested that little piece of trivia, it felt like a much bigger deal than it probably should have. Zach and I had been to Salem for Halloween two years earlier, and we floated how cool it would be to go back together. Like most ideas we have over drinks, it stayed an idea until someone actually opened a calendar.
Then on a random Tuesday in July, I got a cold call from Zach. Accommodations were filling up. Were we down for Salem before every Airbnb cost as much as a small car?
Apparently, we were.
Choosing our characters
Only in the last few weeks leading up to Halloween did we start figuring out whether we were dressing up, which is about how we approach most things in life. There were sporadic messages about couples costumes, group costumes, and who could be talked into what before we finally landed on Super Mario characters. After this weekend, I’ll probably never not dress up for Halloween again. To explain why, I have to tell you about our mini-games.
We arrived Thursday morning after what I hope was the last red-eye I’ll ever take, passed out at the Airbnb for a few hours, and then started the first of three days in Salem, Massachusetts. And I mean the real Salem, not Salem, Oregon. If you visit Massachusetts any other time of the year, you could probably see the town in three hours. Halloween is the exception. What usually feels like a small city becomes the Halloween capital of the world, with all the history and creepy-crawly allure that brings. We stayed three days and watched it spawn scary-movie aficionados from every corner of the globe until the whole town hit its Halloween climax.
We quickly accepted that getting coffee at a local place would involve at least an hour in line, so we gave most of our group their first-ever Dunkin’ Donuts experience. We were all hovering over one phone, placing a pickup order to avoid another line, when I heard a small voice behind us.
“Hi Luigi! Hi Toad! Hi Peach! Hi Mario!”
There was this incredibly sweet kid with his younger sibling and mom, waving at us. We nudged the others and everyone excitedly said hi and wished him a happy Halloween.
He was about three feet tall and wearing a blue-and-tan onesie. I recognized it immediately. “You’re Sonic!” I said.
For half a second, his face fell. Then he threw on his hood, like he was presenting evidence that the whole thing came right off.
“It’s just my costume.”
I froze, trying not to laugh while several things clicked at once. This kid was young enough to believe we were the real characters. The real Luigi wasn’t a tall, slender, light-skinned Italian plumber with a mustache. Apparently he was a 5'9" Mexican guy with a purple Fjällräven backpack and Ray-Bans. Meanwhile, this child was extremely concerned that I might mistake him for the actual blue, lightning-fast hedgehog named Sonic. He had to clear that up before the day got away from us.
The mini-game
After two nights of drinking, a cold brew with light foam was probably all I could get into my system before the smell of apple cider donuts took over Essex Street. To say it was crowded would be like saying the ocean has a lot of water. We were making our way through the clusters of people when we met the people who inspired that day’s mini-game.
Whenever we travel together, Zach and I end up inventing one. For more than two years, our ongoing game has been to take a picture at every bar where we get a drink. My Photos app is now a confusing mix of pictures of my dog and bars from all over the world. It started because one of us would inevitably ask, “What bar was it where…?” and neither of us could remember. We still forget the pictures sometimes, but one of us usually catches it before we leave.
On Essex Street, a woman approached us and said her son loved Mario. Could she take a picture? He was at that age where he could stand and maybe waddle away if nobody watched him closely, but wasn’t quite talking yet. We crouched behind him. His mom tried to get his attention, and he just stared straight at me, examining the “real Luigi” from a few inches away. My biggest regret of the trip might be not asking her to AirDrop me that photo.
As we walked toward Village Tavern to collect our apple cider donuts, I proposed a new rule: every time we saw another Super Mario character, we’d ask for a picture together.
A Bowser appeared shortly after and happily obliged.
Another Mario did not. We greeted her with an enthusiastic “Eyyyyyy!” and she froze, looked away, and did that thing you do when you lock eyes with a teacher outside of school and decide the safest option is to pretend neither of you exists.
Every square inch of Salem felt like it had its own little story going on. At one point, in the span of about 11 seconds, a guy directly in front of me slipped on some leaves, face-planted, and sent his very nice Sony camera smacking into the ground. To my right, an entirely unrelated guy darted across my field of view like a ninja. His friend chased after him, saying, “Oh my God, he’s gonna get arrested… again.”
I never got an explanation for either event. Salem gave me both at once and kept walking.
The part of Salem that isn’t a costume
I can’t quite tell if Salem actually likes that its city is so closely tied to Halloween or if it feels like an actor who’s been permanently typecast. History has a way of deciding what a place is known for, regardless of what the people living there would rather talk about. Germany is an extreme and very different example, but I think about how its citizens today can still feel the need to reassure the world that its darkest history will never happen again, while also wishing the rest of us would let them be known for more than that one chapter. Walking through Salem, I wondered how many people who live here are tired of being introduced as the witch-trials city before anything else.
There’s also the history underneath all the costumes. In 1692, 19 people were hanged during the witch trials, and Giles Corey was pressed to death. You could be accused of witchcraft and have spectral evidence used against you: someone saying they saw your spirit do something. Try finding an alibi for your spirit. The story some locals told us was that the trials only “coincidentally” stopped once the governor’s wife, Mary Phips, was accused using the same kind of evidence. Governor Phips dissolved the old court, and the court that later heard the remaining cases stopped accepting spectral evidence. Whether her accusation was the reason or one of several, the timing makes you wonder whose word finally became too uncomfortable to take at face value. I’ve linked the historical timeline below.
That’s a real and serious part of the city’s history. Doing a historically accurate reenactment of its darkest period while characters from Mario Kart sit in the audience might rub some people the wrong way. And if your small city attracts tens of thousands of people who mostly want to drink and party all day and night, I can imagine getting a little tired of the cycle.
Salem was prepared for those crowds, at least: port-a-potties, street vendors, musicians, and seemingly every possible reason to stay a little longer and spend money.
Two Luigis, one photo
One of my favorite moments came at the waterfront bar by Charlotte Forten Park. All day we’d seen Marios from a distance, the occasional drunk Luigi, maybe a Princess Peach. Then, from the back of a snaking line, we spotted our exact costume twins near the front.
We made eyes at their group near the front of the line and started frantically waving to get their attention. Through the bodies in front of us, we could only make out one or two costumes at a time. Then their Toad popped into view. We held up our Toad, they waved back, and there was a brief period in which eight adults were thrilled that four of them had bought matching costumes.
When we finally got close, they happily took a picture with us and continued on their night, double-fisting a drink and a shot cup. For a minute, I felt dorky for dragging strangers into a game I’d made up about eight hours earlier that day.
Then their much taller Luigi came back, phone in hand, and asked if we could send him the pictures. I showed him how to AirDrop them.
Mini-games and festivities like this take my mind off the world for a while. I know I’ll have plenty of regrets in my life. But I don’t think any of them will be the time I spent with my friends, celebrating, and making new friends, even if it was only long enough to take a picture. After this weekend, I’ll probably never not dress up for Halloween again.
— Edgar
Salem history: Salem Witch Museum, FAQs and trial chronology. The Salem Witch Museum describes the accusation against the governor’s wife as one of several factors. The old court was dissolved in October 1692; the court that heard remaining cases in January 1693 no longer accepted spectral evidence. The “coincidentally” version above is how locals told us the story.
Loading comments…