On Thursday, October 31, Peddie had lots of Halloween fun, including a haunted house experience in the basement of Austen Colgate, as well as trick-or-treating around all the dorms. But the highlight of the evening was the annual PFS Halloween dinner and costume contest in the dining hall. Students of all grades gathered together and enjoyed Halloween-themed food, including mummy dogs, dragon eggs and vampire donuts.
This event was open to all grades and opened Peddie’s friendly environment to every student. Heidi Luer ‘28 was dressed up as one of the Little Green Men from Toy Story. “I really liked the atmosphere they created in the food area and how on-theme the dinner was,” Heidi said. Indeed, all the freshmen were having a lot of fun as well, celebrating their first Halloween party at Peddie. Peddie had three different costume contest categories: individual, pair and group. Everybody had so much fun taking pictures with each other and cheering on their friends as they walked up to be candidates for the best costume. Some impressive costumes included an angel, Snoopy and Charlie Brown, and even a giant Pikachu that walked across the dining hall, earning pictures and high-fives from everyone. Kevin Hu ’27, the sophomore dressed up as the Pikachu, enjoyed the Halloween fun to the fullest. “I always have the best costumes,” he said.
However, the spotlight of the event was definitely the group costume contest, where students could see a group of smurfs, Ed Sheeran covers, as well as the entire men’s swim team dressed up as prison inmates. At the end of the day, the winners of the group contest were three sophomores, each dressed up as pink, green and purple batches of grapes.
Aria Shi ’27, the purple grape batch among the three winners of the group contest, said she had a lot of fun with her friends throughout the entire event. “My friend came up with the idea of dressing up as grape batches, and after we spent an afternoon blowing up balloons and stringing them together, we were super happy with how the costumes turned out!” Aria continued, “On Thursday, the dinner was very cool, with the special themed food and darkened room. I didn’t really think we were going to win anything, but when it was announced that we’d won, we all just started laughing like we couldn’t believe it. We went up with our goofy costumes to get our pictures taken.”
Overall, this year’s Halloween event was definitely successful in terms of good food, fun experiences, and most importantly, community bonding. Through laughing and cheering with each other while enjoying a special dinner and festive dessert, students had an amazing Halloween night at Peddie — a perfect way to finish up October.