The NCA Guide to a Safe Community Halloween! By Ed Avis
Illustrations by Daniela Rojas Arias
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Thank you, Sponsors!
Morris Costumes
This guide is published and copyrighted by the National Costumers
Association, 2020. All rights reserved. However, NCA members may
reproduce parts as needed to help create their own community
Halloween events.
Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................2
10 Ideas for a Safe Community Halloween ......3 1. No-Touch Trick or Treating ........................4 2. Virtual Halloween Fun Run ........................6 3. Online Masquerade Ball ..............................8 4. Community Costume Contest ....................9 5. Reverse Halloween Parade........................10 6. Drive-by Zombie Walk ..................................11 7. Halloween DĂŠcor Contest ........................12 8. Scary Movie Night ......................................13 9. Jack-o-Lantern Contest ............................14 10. Halloween Photo Scavenger Hunt ........15
Safety in Your Store ........................................16
Costumes that Use Masks ................................17
Introduction Welcome to the NCA’s Help Halloween Happen Campaign!
The NCA Help Halloween Happen campaign has three compo-
nents: The guide you are reading right now, which is full of ideas
that NCA members can take to their community leaders to encourage a safe, fun local Halloween; free poster creation and printing to support local events our members develop; and stickers that members can hand out to kids buying costumes.
The aim of the Help Halloween Happen campaign is to create
local excitement about Halloween. We want the residents of your
community to shop in your store. That’s why the three parts of the
campaign all bring the focus to your store. When your neighbors are thinking about Halloween this year, we want them thinking about you, too!
Naturally, the campaign will succeed only with your involve-
ment. Once you decide on one or more of the events described in
this book – or that you develop yourself – contact NCA Executive Director Ed Avis (executivedirector@costumers.org, 708-218-7755)
and he will help you access the free poster creation service, which
will help you promote the event in your community.
We are grateful to the sponsors of the Help Halloween Hap-
pen campaign: Disguise, Dreamgirl, Ellie Shoes, Ghoulish Costumes,
Graftobian Make-Up, Morris Costumes and Zagone Studios. As you
shop for this Halloween season, please remember these sponsors! Good luck, and good sales this Halloween!
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10 Ideas for a Safe Community Halloween Yes, Halloween will happen this year! Despite the challenges of
COVID, millions of people want to get out and celebrate this beloved,
costume-filled holiday. The ideas on the following pages will help your community celebrate safely.
Some of the ideas require involvement with your local authori-
ties. Naturally, where you start depends on your community, but as a
general rule of thumb, try starting with the elected official most re-
sponsible for your neighborhood. For example, if you live in a city, your
alderman or councilman is probably the person who can most likely get
a community Halloween idea off the ground. If you live in a small town, you may be able to go directly to the mayor or other local leader. In
some cases, the Chamber of Commerce may be your best starting point,
since they also want to see your local businesses thrive.
When you decide on an idea, make sure you take ownership by
helping organize and lead the event. That will help ensure that your
shop is front-and-center of the event. And when you have the details,
contact Ed Avis, executive director of the NCA, (executivedirector@ cos-
tumers.org, 708-218-7755) and the NCA will create posters to help promote the event.
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1. No-Touch Trick or Treating Trick-or-treating is the heart of Halloween, and it can still be
done safely this year! The key is to limit contact between costumed kids and the people handing out candy. Here are some ideas:
- Have families that want to participate put a table at the end of their
driveway or sidewalk and space the pieces of candy out on the table.
The candy-giver can stand six feet behind the table (or on the porch or
doorway) to greet trick-or-treaters, and the trick-or-treaters can take
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one piece of candy from the table without
touching the others. People who are really into the idea can decorate their table in a Halloween theme!
- Create a “trunk-or-treat” by parking cars in a parking lot, such as of a shopping mall or school, with trunks open and candy inside,
safely spread out. Have trick-or-treaters line up at a safe distance at the entrance to the parking lot and let them in in small groups.
Kids can grab a piece of candy as they pass by each trunk, and families can watch from the cars or at a distance.
- Create a confined trick-or-treating space,
such as a park or playground. Mark out a path through the space and
put candy on tables throughout. Have the trick-or-treaters line up six feet apart (or in family groups separated by six feet) at the entrance
to the path and let them in when the trick-or-treater or group ahead is a few tables down the way. Families or businesses can donate the
candy and decorate each table.
- Encourage “reverse trick-or-treating,” or ghosting. This means that
costumed kids go to their friends’ houses and drop off treats on their porches with little notes attached that say, “You’ve been
ghosted!” This can be done any time in the week leading up
to Halloween, so there’s less chance of contact.
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2. Virtual Halloween Fun Run Fun runs, such as 5K walk/runs, are often part of community
Halloween events. The temperature in late October is perfect nearly everywhere for people to get out and run the streets, many in cos-
tume! The fun, exercise and excitement of a 5K Halloween Fun Run can
be partially recreated by creating a fun run that people participate in
on their own time, rather than all together. Here are some tips:
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- Announce a Halloween Fun Run just like you would on a normal year,
except explain that this year it will be done individually rather than in a big crowd. Establish an online registration, create t-shirts, and promote the event just like you would any year.
- If your community normally holds a Halloween fun run on a particular route, encourage them to do the same thing this year except create
three or four different routes for it, to limit the potential of participants crowding the route.
- Encourage participants to get into the Halloween spirit by running the route in costume and taking selfies at the finish line. Give special
awards – maybe gift certificates to local businesses – for the best costume a participant wears. Make sure there are categories for children, seniors, etc. to spread the fun.
- Rather than hold the event at one specific time, set a two-week window in which participants can run one of the designated routes. Everyone with a smartphone – and that’s everyone! – can time him- or
herself on the run. They can also take pictures and submit them to the
website and/or Facebook page for the race.
- Once the two-week time period is over, promote all the runners by
creating a collage of the submitted photos and handing out awards in a
virtual ceremony. Invite everyone to log in to watch!
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3. Online Masquerade Ball A masquerade ball is a fun way to celebrate Halloween while
showing off a great new costume, and that can still happen this year
via Zoom! The key to making it a community event is to set the event to a specific time – the evening of Friday, October 30 would be perfect
for 2020 – and hire a DJ to spin tunes. With a live DJ, the attendees can all dance to the same music from the safety of their homes and
they can even make song requests via Zoom. Just like a regular costume party, judges can view the dancers and award prizes for best costume,
best dance moves, scariest make-up and any other category you can
dream up. Consider setting up several virtual dance parties for different
groups and interests – kids, teens, singles, seniors, hip hop fans, polka fans, country music lovers, etc.
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4. Community Costume Contest Everyone from babies to seniors likes getting dressed up at Hal-
loween! Help them show off their costumes by sponsoring a virtual
community costume contest with prizes from local businesses. This can
be coordinated through the Chamber of Commerce or just by contacting other local businesses. Ask the businesses to donate small prizes – such as gift certificates, low-cost giveaways, or free introductory services –
and gather them in prize baskets. Create categories for children, teens,
adults, and seniors and offer multiple prizes in each category, such as
Most Original, Funniest or Best Use of Makeup. Create as many categories as you can with the prizes you collect from businesses. Set a
deadline for people to post photos of themselves in costume and tell all the businesses that offered prizes to promote the contest on their social media. Find some local celebrities to judge the entries and make a
big deal out of announcing the winners. Hopefully your local media will
pick up the story!
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5. Reverse Halloween Parade Halloween parades are a fun part of many community celebra-
tions. This year they can still happen – just in reverse! Here’s how it
works: Every business or organization that would have normally partici-
pated in the Halloween parade is encouraged to create the float or ex-
hibit they would have created during a normal year. Then on the day of
the parade, they drive the float to a large parking lot or wide street
and park it. People who want to view the parade drive slowly past each float – people on the float can even toss candy to them – and take it all in, just like they would if the floats were driving past them. Of
course, everyone involved should be encouraged to wear a costume and
get fully into the experience!
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6. Drive-by Zombie Walk Zombie walks might not happen the normal way during COVID…
but the undead can’t be kept underground! Promote a “zombie day” –
maybe the Saturday prior to Halloween – in which zombies and zombie
families cavort in their front yards and fans drive by in their cars to
get a scare! Start the ball rolling by holding a Zoom workshop on cre-
ating zombie makeup a week or two in advance. (Be sure to include hospital masks as part of the zombie look, of course!) Then ask all of the
undead to register in advance so that downloadable maps can be cre-
ated to show fans where the zombies will be on the appointed day and
time. Fans will love driving by and getting a socially distanced dose of
the undead, and they can vote on their favorite, or scariest, zombies!
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7. Halloween Décor Contest Halloween decorating is unaffected by COVID! Create a commu-
nity Halloween décor contest to encourage decorators. Offer discounts on Halloween décor in your shop and offer free no-touch delivery for people who don’t want to come into your store. Maybe offer a Zoom
workshop on creating Halloween décor and decorating for the season. Create an 8.5 x 11 poster (with your store logo) that says, “Vote for Our House in the Halloween Décor Contest by texting xxx!” Send a
PDF of the poster to every household that wants to participate in the contest. They can print out the poster and put it in a window or on a yard sign. Promote the event in your community and tell residents to drive by the homes to view the décor and vote on their favorite!
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8. Scary Movie Night Since few people are going to movie theaters these days, a fun
community Halloween event – or series of events – could be a Halloween movie night. If your community has an empty parking lot or
field, you might be able to set up a temporary drive-in theater so that attendees can stay safely in the cars. But it’s more likely that you’ll
have to do this in a park. In order to safely spread the families, create
circles that are 8 or 9 feet apart so families or friend groups can sit at safe distances from others. Movies shown to groups require a special li-
cense — one company that provides them is Swank.com and costs range $375 to $450 per movie – and you’ll need a quality projector, screen and sound system. If you do more than one night, choose different
types of movies for each night – animated for the family night, scary
for the teens, cult classic for the adults. Most important, tell everyone
to dress in costume!
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9. Jack-o-Lantern Contest Nothing says Happy Halloween as much as a jack-o-lantern! Cre-
ate a pumpkin-carving contest in your community and make it 100 per-
cent socially distant by asking entrants to simply submit photos of their
jack-o-lanterns (with them in costume beside the pumpkin, of course!).
Have a panel of local artists or craftspeople judge the jack-o-lanterns
and give gift certificates as prizes. Make sure there are several cate-
gories – scariest, funniest, most artistic, etc. – and be sure to send
photos of the winners to your local news organizations.
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10. Halloween Photo Scavenger Hunt Get your community involved with your local attractions by hold-
ing a Halloween Photo Scavenger Hunt. Here’s how this works: Walk or
drive through your community and take pictures of interesting things
that are Halloween related (even slightly!) such as gargoyles on build-
ings, scary alleys, old houses, etc. Find a dozen or so of those, then post
them on your Facebook page or web site. Tell people the general geography of the locations – such as downtown – and ask them to try to
find each one and take a picture of it, preferably with them standing in
front in costume! Everyone who submits a photo of every item on the
list gets a small gift certificate for Halloween décor, costumes or make-
up in your shop.
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Halloween Safety in Your Store When customers visit your store to buy Halloween costumes,
you’ll have to make sure they do so safely. Here are some tips:
- Try to reduce last-minute buyers by offering special deals to shop
earlier in the season. Try a “declining discount coupon” that is worth 15 percent off in September, 10 percent off in early October, but zero percent off in late October. Every customer who buys a costume in
early October is one less customer crowding your store on October 30. - Consider offering a special deal to people renting costumes that en-
courages them to pick it up early and keep it until November. For example, one NCA member lets rental customers who pay just 50% more
than the normal rental keep the costume from late September until
early November. This reduces the rush of customers on the last few
days before Halloween. When the costumes are returned, quarantine them for at least 48 hours and then clean them how you normally would.
- Offer home delivery if you can. This might increase business, and for
sure will reduce the number of customers in your store.
- If you sell make-up, invest in some disposable palette papers and pro-
vide daubs of samples to customers on the papers, rather than allowing
them to touch the sample packages themselves.
- Don’t let customers try on masks or costumes, but increase the number of mannequins in your store and offer to change them
at the customers’ request. Or designate an employee as the official mask and costume model.
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- If there’s some reason that customers MUST try on masks, give them a disposable liner to wear underneath (Zagone Studios and Morris Costumes offer low-cost disposable liners designed to be worn underneath costume masks).
- Naturally, follow the protocol every store does – require all customers to wear masks, spread them out 6 feet apart at the cash register, limit the total number of customers in your store, and disinfect frequently.
If you follow these tips, you will minimize the risk of spreading
COVID in your store. And customers should feel confident shopping with you!
Costumes that Naturally Use Face Masks Everyone should be wearing a medical mask at Halloween this
year, of course. Lots of great ideas have emerged that allow people to
incorporate a mask into their costume, such as face masks that look like animal faces and masks that feature a scary mouth. But some costumes naturally go with masks or otherwise feature a covered face, such as
these:
Doctor/Nurse
Zombie
Hazardous Waste Disposal Expert
Bank Robber/Bandit Superhero
Cowboy
Fireman
Scientist/Researcher Mummy
Scuba Diver
Zorro
Ghost
Phantom of the Opera
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Thank you, Sponsors!
Morris Costumes
