How to Celebrate Spooky Season as an Aussie: Books, Movies, Music & Fun Things To Do!

Hi all!

It’s officially Spooky Season! Its autumn in America but right now in Australia it’s spring, but I’m not going to a let a little thing like that prevent me from celebrating this spooky time of the year, complete with falling orange leaves, pumpkins, and bats. Gosh, I love this season!

And seeing as this aesthetic is 100% my vibe, I thought I’d share some fun ways us Aussies — and anyone else who’s not American — can all celebrate Spooky Season together!

😍 = my favourite

Read Spooky Books

The best way to get into Spooky Season is to read as many spooky books as possible this October. I love a good creepy or atmospheric read. Sometimes I go for straight horror, but sometimes I like books that are subtle in their creepiness, dark and atmospheric in their tone.

• Ninth House: Alex receives a scholarship to Yale and works for a secret society, investigating a murder on campus 😍
• The Secret History: Five friends at an elite college studying Ancient Greek history and myth kill someone and try to cover it up 😍
• Daughter of Smoke and Bone: Karou, who works for a demon, finds herself caught up in a centuries old war between angels and demons 😍
• The One Hundreds Nights of Hero: Based on Arabian Nights, two girls tell stories to prevent a man from taking advantage of them
• The Binding: Emmett becomes a bookbinder in a world where books are discarded memories 😍

• Gideon the Ninth: Gideon leaves a life of servitude but her childhood nemesis needs her sword in order to ascend as a necromancer
• The Monster of Elendhaven: Elendhaven is a city stalked by a monster who is sent on errands by his master, twisting him further and further into magic
• The Turn of the Key: Rowan becomes a nanny in a “smart home”, but before she knows it, she’s on trial for murder
• Bunny: Samantha receives an invitation to an exclusive club and begins to take part in some rituals, creating monsters.
• City of Ghosts: Cass’s parents are ghost hunters, but Cass can actually see ghosts and when she meets another girl who can see ghosts, Cass discovers that she has a mission to send them to the Veil

• Her Body and Other Parties: A short story collection about psychological realism, science fiction, horror, fantasy and fabulism, focusing on women’s lives and the violence visited on their bodies
• Wilder Girls: A school is cut off from the rest of the world as a plague sweeps through it, but Hetty is only interested in finding her friend who’s gone missing
• Witchmark: Magical families control the fates of nations by drawing powers from their seconds, while Miles tries to free himself from that world and his family
• There Will Come a Darkness: The Seven Prophets disappeared but they left behind one final prophecy foretelling an age of darkness and a new Prophet who will rise and destroy the world
• The Bone Witch: Tea accidentally resurrects her brother from the dead, discovering she’s a necromancer unlike the other witches in her family, making her feared in her community

Watch Spooky Movies and Shows

Movies:

• Hocus Pocus: A boy and his sister accidentally reincarnate three witches who are hellbent on consuming the children of Salem. 😍
• Drag Me to Hell: A woman is cursed and has to find a way to break it before her soul is dragged to hell.
• Coraline: A young girl finds a door to a secret universe where she finds she has another family. 😍
• Us: A family goes on holiday and is attacked by people that look exactly like them.
• Monster House: A group of teens try to find a way to destroy a home that is a monster before Halloween.

• It: A clown is murdering the town’s children and group of friends begin to fight back. 😍
• A Quiet Place: A family tries to survive in a world where you can’t make sound.
• Corpse Bride: A young man must rescue his bride who was murdered before their wedding.
• Midsommar: A couple travel to Sweden for a festival, which quickly turns into pagan cult-like rituals.
• The Addams Family: A creepy family has to protect their home when a TV personality wants to get rid of it.

• The Babadook: A single mother tries to prove to her son that there’s no monster living in their home, when she begins to suspect that maybe there is.
• Hereditary: When the matriarch of a family passes away, her family begin to unravel her secrets.
• Paranorman: A boy who can see the dead must stop an army of zombies from rising. 😍
• Battle Royale: A group of students must fight to the death as ordered by the Japanese totalitarian government.
• Twitches: Twin magical sisters have to come together to save their kingdom.

• The Purge: A family tries to survive the night in a world where people have 12 hours to legally commit crimes — including murder.
• Paranormal Activity: A husband and wife are attacked by a malevolent force in their home.
• Scream: A masked maniac begins murdering teenagers in a small town. 😍
• Get Out: A Black man meets his white girlfriend’s family and begins to suspect something is wrong.
• Jennifer’s Body: A young woman is possessed by a demon and her best friend tries to stop her from murdering the school’s male population. 😍

Shows:

• Over the Garden Wall: Two brothers must find their way out of a garden but a sinister creature is following them. 😍
• The Haunting of Hill House: After their sister is murdered, a family has to come together and confront their haunted past. 😍
• What We Do in the Shadows: Based on the movie of the same name, a group of vampires living in Staten Island are tasked with destroyed the “New World”. 😍
• Crazyhead: A young woman tries and saves her friend who is possessed by a demon.
• Channel Zero: A horror anthology show. First season: A child psychologist tries to find out if his brother’s disappearance is connected to a children’s television show.

• Hannibal: An FBI agent who can emphasise with serial killers receives help from his psychologist to solve crimes, not knowing that his psychologist is a cannibal. 😍
• Love, Death + Robots: An animated anthology series that explores alternate histories, post-apocalyptic worlds, and world domination.
• Black Mirror: An anthology series revolving around technology, set in world’s only minutes away from our own. 😍
• Mindhunter: A group of FBI agents interview some of America’s most prolific killers in the hopes of creating a psychological profile for the future.
• Gravity Falls: Twins Dipper and Mabel are sent to their great uncle’s home, the Mystery Shack, for the summer, and begin to uncover the town’s mysterious secrets. 😍

Do Spooky Things

• Go on a Ghost Tour

I know you’re probably thinking this is either lame or impossible, but it’s not! My friends and I went on a ghost tour around Melbourne last year and it was so much fun! We visited famous murder sites and places where ghosts are known to frequent. We even had dinner at one such place, the Young & Jackson.

• Have a scary movie/show marathon 

Nothing gets you into a spooky mood faster than bingeing a bunch of movies or TV shows. Check out the list of movies up above, but if you want a recent recommendation, I just watched Creeped Out on Netflix and it was amazing! It’s more a kids show — kind of like Black Mirror — but damn I was … creeped out.

• Experiment with a makeup look for Halloween

If you’re someone like me who loves makeup, then this is something you definitely have to do for Halloween! There’s nothing more fun and will get you in the mood faster than playing with makeup and making yourself look as pretty or scary as possible!

Here’s a look that I made up! It’s not that great but I had fun doing it!

(Products used: It Cosmetics CC cream, Morphe 35B eyeshadow palette (shade: Puffs), Anastasia Beverly Hills Soft Glam eyeshadow palette (shades: Orange Soda, Mulberry), Pat McGrath Eye Ecstasy Sublime eyeshadow palette (shade: Gold Nectar), Rimmel Wonder Wing eyeliner, Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Gel, Anastasia Beverly Hills bronzer (shade: Rosewood), Tarte mascara, Fenty lipstick (shade: Uncuffed), Fenty highlighter (shade: Hu$tla Baby).)

• Decorate your home 

Whether you like to decorate your home with Halloween decorations or Autumn-themed decorations, this is something that’s super fun to do. While in Australia we don’t really get into the “fall” theme — because it’s spring lol — I still like decorating my home with
pumpkins and leaves and anything else that reminds me of this time of the year.

• Dress up your pets

I don’t have any pets unfortunately, but if I did, I’d 100% be dressing them up in cute little Halloween outfits!

• Bake Halloween cookies

If you don’t eat an abundance of sugar on Halloween, did you even celebrate Halloween?

• Have a sleepover and tell scary stories

Last year, I had my friends come over for Halloween and we spent the whole night watching scary movies and telling each other (lame) stories. It was one of the most fun nights ever!

• Drink a pumpkin spice latte

I have news for Americans: pumpkin spice latte is literally just a chai latte. I went to America last November and finally got to try this “incredible” pumpkin spice latte that everyone has been going on about for years — and imagine my complete disappointment when I realised I’d already tried it multiple times … in the form of chai latte. Ah well. It
still tastes nice. So if you’re someone like me who can’t get a hold of a pumpkin spice
latte, you can just have a chai one!

• Throw a Halloween party

I haven’t thrown a Halloween party before, but for my 21st, I did have a Friday the 13th party (because Friday the 13th was three days later) and everyone dressed up and had an amazing time. So I highly suggest this spooky thing to do! I dressed up like Cruella De Vil and one of my friends came dressed as one of Dexter’s murder victims.

• Make a Fall music playlist

This is a great way to get you in the mood for autumn! For me, autumn reminds me of a mixture of soft, kind of indie music, and loud fun music that remind me of road trips with friends. Check out a playlist I made right below. You don’t have to listen to the songs in order, but I did put them in a kind of order so. To listen to the full playlist, you do need Spotify but if you don’t have it, you can always listen to the songs on YouTube or something.

• Hunt for ghosts

Old Melbourne Gaol

I’m completely serious about this one! Wherever you live, I’m sure there’s a supposed haunted place nearby, whether its a cemetery or an old mental asylum. If you live in/near Melbourne or Victoria, here’s some haunted places for you and your friends to hunt ghosts in:

1. Aradale Asylum in Ararat
2. Old Melbourne Gaol — Ned Kelly (famous Aussie criminal) was hanged here in 1880
3. Beechworth Asylum
4. Craig’s Royal Hotel in Ballarat
5. Altona Homestead
6. Young & Jackson pub
7. Hosier Lane

• Paint your nails a Fall colour

Go for orange, red, black, yellow, burgundy — basically anything you associate falling leaves with!

• Take fun photos with your friends

While in Australia, the leaves aren’t currently falling from the trees, the flowers are blooming and it’s a good chance to go to the botanical gardens (or something similar) to take some awesome photos with your friends!

Royal Melbourne Botanical Gardens

• Give out candy on Halloween night

In Australia, Halloween is popular but nowhere near as big as in America. If you want to take part in Halloween, people usually leave decorations outside their houses to show kids that they’re giving out candy. If you don’t have decorations up, people usually leave you alone. I personally love giving out candy to kids, I love seeing their little costumes and how excited they get when you give them chocolates!

• Buy some warm clothes

For me, spooky season is all about wearing fuzzy socks and warm hoodies and cozying up under a blanket with a hot chocolate (or I guess a pumpkin spice latte). So get yourself some new quirky socks and a nice warm hoody!

• Go trick or treating!

Easily the best way to celebrate spooky season is to go trick or treating yourself! When my brother was little, my sister and I would take him around the neighbourhood in his little Dalek costume and we had the best time! And you know what, even if you don’t have a kid in your life, screw it, still go trick or treating if you want!

How are you going to celebrate this Spooky Season? What movies/shows have you watched? Have you read any scary books? Let me know! 

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