Leaves falling off the tree, nights getting darker earlier, pumpkin patches, pumpkin spice flavored drinks and treats are all events signaling the summer is ending and the fall season is starting. It also means Halloween is coming.

John Mravik, an English professor at Elgin Community College, used to enjoy all holidays in the fall including Halloween. Now he finds it all to be too stressful and chaotic. Mravik shares what his favorite Halloween memory is that he had as a kid.

“I remember going trick-or-treating with a friend of mine at the age of 14,” Mravik said. “My neighbors were not impressed and let us know that we were too old to be collecting candy. When one particular neighbor opened his door, my buddy sneezed and sprayed candy-flavored spit all over the screen in his storm door. He chased us off of his front porch.”

The best part about the spooky season, as Mravik would say, is getting all the free candy, but that’s not the only thing that Mravik enjoys about Halloween. Dressing up was also fun to do as a kid.

“I dressed up like a beat-up boxer,” Mravik said. “It was sweet because all I needed to do was put on a championship belt, some boxing gloves and a couple of Band-Aids on my face. My wheelchair was a sweet accessory for the costume, too!”

Now as an adult, Mravik is grading papers for his classes for Halloween.

Ali-Reza Kashani, Coordinator of First-Year programs at ECC, enjoys seeing all the costumes and haunted houses during the spooky season.

For Kashani, as an adult during Halloween, he normally is passing out candy to trick or treaters stopping by his house or going trick or treating with his nieces and nephews.

Horror movies have obviously changed a lot from then to now especially with all the advanced technology used to make the movies and Kashani agree.

“Horror movies were totally scarier back then, but there are some on now that are scary too,” Kashani said.

Kashani’s favorite horror movies are Scream from 1996 and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 1974.

“I’ve watched the remakes of the Chainsaw Massacre, they were good, but I still prefer the original” Kashani said.

As for ECC student Vena Scott, now that she’s older and no longer a kid there’s somewhat more for her to do. She no longer goes trick or treating and the last time she went was freshman year in high school.

“Now that I’m older I try to find Halloween parties to go to with my friends and dress up in some type of Halloween costume at those parties,” Scott said.

As a kid, everybody remembers fearing some scary villain but for Scott, the villain she feared might come off as a surprise.

“The scariest villain I feared as a kid was Michael Jackson,” Scott said. “After all that plastic surgery and disfigurement of his face just scared me when I was younger. I even had a bad dream once that he was chasing me yelling “hehe” and it was one of those chasing dreams where I was running super slow, but he was running fast. I’m still scared of going to cemeteries after that.”