The death of the scary costume: When did Halloween become an Instagram photoshoot?

It’s not even Halloween yet and Glasgow’s already acting like the apocalypse is on tap. A guy in a banana suit and his mate in a hotdog costume are ordering pints at Inn Deep. No one blinks. The bartender with perfect eyeliner doesn’t care. The couple arguing over nachos doesn’t look up. Glasgow decided spooky season starts when it feels like it, and the rest of us just try to keep up.

Halloween used to make you scream, not pose

Somewhere between the fifth pumpkin display and the million TikToks of people lip-syncing to Tears by Sabrina Carpenter, it hit me. Halloween isn’t about scaring people anymore. It’s about serving looks.

We used to dress to frighten. Now we dress for engagement rates. Fear has been replaced by filters, and jump scares by soft lighting. The only ghosts people care about are the ones in their DMs.

The influencer apocalypse

Walk through town on a Friday night and it feels like every club is shooting its own horror film. A girl in corpse makeup making out with a sexy bin man. A guy insisting his outfit is “late-stage Brexit.” A crying minion in the toilets. Everyone performing their breakdowns like art projects. If aliens landed on Sauchiehall Street tonight, they would leave immediately out of second-hand embarrassment.

Halloween has turned into one long personal brand campaign. Forget being spooky; it is all about who can get the perfect “candid” selfie before their wings melt off.

Maybe everyone’s just tired

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But maybe it isn’t vanity. Maybe we are just exhausted. The fake blood, glitter, and overdrawn eyeliner might be everyone’s way of saying “I’m still here. Please notice me.”

Halloween used to be about transformation. Becoming something else for one night. Now it is just presentation. Ring lights instead of rituals. We do not become the monster anymore, we queue up to audition for one. Maybe that is not tragedy, maybe it is just evolution with lip gloss.

When the makeup melts

By 3am, the horns have slipped, smudge-proof eyeliner has surrendered, and heels are being held like trophies. The air smells of plastic, Tennent’s, and regret. The filters fade, and everyone trudges home in silence, faces half-painted, souls half-charged.

That is when it hits you. Halloween is not dead. It has just changed costume. The fear is not gone, it is digital now. It lives in the ghost of unread notifications, the hollow laugh at a joke you do not find funny, the quiet after everyone stops recording.

Real fear does not photograph well. It is messy. It is sweat, noise, and losing control. The kind of thing you cannot crop or caption.

The real horror story

I tell myself I am above it. That I do not care. But that is a lie. I love the theatre of it all. The permission to be someone else, even for a night.

Maybe Halloween has never been about fear. Maybe it has always been about pretending, pretending until we finally feel something.

And that is the real horror story this season. Not ghosts or ghouls, but us, still screaming into the void, hoping someone is watching.