Spooky season. You either love it or hate it, but with COVID-19, the beloved holiday may look quite different. 

Due to the high transmission of illness during holidays as well as the high risk nature of Halloween, the CDC is recommending other lower risk activities for the popular dress-up celebration. Some of these activities include pumpkin carving with family, decorating your house or even having a virtual costume contest. 

However, it doesn’t seem that Powell is putting a halt to any of the beloved Halloween festivities. The annual haunted house at the fairgrounds, a fundraiser for the PHS Theatre Department, is set to be open on the nights of Oct. 23-24 and Oct. 30-31, with new precautions.

“What they’re doing is trying to make it bigger than normal so that it’s vented properly …,” PHS senior and haunted house actor Elsie Spomer said. “Everyone who is working is going to be wearing a mask; we’ll have smaller groups going through and make sure that they are within a specific group.”

Even with efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19 without having to cancel events, certain towns across the country are going as far as putting restrictions on trick-or-treating. However, it doesn’t seem Park County is going to follow suit. 

“I don’t think our town’s plans are changing because our community isn’t very uptight about [COVID restrictions],” PHS sophomore Maddie Hedges said. “I think there can be precautions taken, but I don’t think anyone is going to do anything differently.”

How will your Halloween look this year with COVID-19? When conducting a poll on Instagram, it seemed this was the general response: 

“Trick or treating and haunted house with masks of course.”

– Sophomore Hannah Hincks

“Trick-or-treating baby!”

– Junior Brooklynn Bennett

“Working in the haunted house, gonna have a good day.”

– Sophomore Josh Ashcraft