My 13-year-old has long been into urban legends, sinister stories, ghosts, and creepypasta (horror stories passed around the Internet). She could tell you all about Slenderman, Ben Drowned, the 8 Foot Tall Lady, Hanako-san, and the Rake. There was a long obsession (for a tween, anyway) with the horror-filled video game franchise “Five Nights at Freddy’s.”
I don’t know where she gets it. Other than reading the very occasional Stephen King novel or watching Stranger Things, I’m not at all into the scary stuff. My entertainment choices are far tamer—I’m a knitter and crafter who reads literary fiction for fun.
I would never say Halloween is my favorite holiday, but it is hers. She loves the spooky aspects of it, but she also loves creating her costume, which is great because it allows us to combine our interests in a way we can both enjoy.
Related: I’m Letting My 5-Year-Old Watch ‘Stranger Things’
She always has very specific ideas about what she wants to be for Halloween: Kiki from the movie Kiki’s Delivery Service, a Ravenclaw from Harry Potter (complete with a hand-knit wizard robe and house scarf), a character wearing a tiger-striped mask with a long, pointed nose reminiscent of a plague doctor. Like I said, specific.
Last year’s costume tapped into another passion of hers I don’t share—anime and manga. She was very into My Hero Academia and decided she wanted to dress as Ochako Uraraka, a class 1-A student with the quirk of removing gravity from objects by touching them. (Sure.)
But she didn’t simply want to be that character, she wanted to be Uraraka in her Halloween get-up—so, a witch. As I researched the original costume and looked for ways to re-create it—a skater skirt with lace sewn at the bottom, a revamped orange t-shirt, and some black t-shirt material with eyelets to imply a corset—I found myself getting excited about it.
I also got a little more excited, or at least a little less annoyed, by the constant talking about the characters. I reminded myself that this chatter is the hallmark of a kid who is interested in something. And that I should be happy she wanted to talk to me about anything at all.
More than that, though, I felt the privilege of her wanting to share this thing with me that she loved so much, and began to understand how we could use it to create our own story.
I still don’t know Denki Kaminari from Izuku Midoriya, but working on that costume together helped me to see the creative aspects of the things she likes, the storytelling and world-building, which appeal to me as a writer and a crafter.
And I feel like she gets that, too. As often as she rehashes plot points, she’s also telling me how every detail is meaningful in the Demon Slayer manga, or why the color scheme for a particular character doesn’t work for her (she loves to draw so she pays attention to how the characters are presented and for what purpose).
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the ridiculousness of almost everyone’s shoes in her favorite video game, Genshin Impact. We discuss the best weapons to go with the characters’ aesthetics and the storylines we’d like to see.
I’ve also introduced her to Stranger Things, and for her 13th birthday, I gave her a graphic novel about the Crescent Hotel, billed as the most haunted hotel in America.
I still don’t like creepy stuff, and, as it turns out, she doesn’t love Stranger Things. But at least we’ve found ways into each other’s worlds and how to talk about the things she loves that don’t (always) involve the endless repetition that drives parents up a wall.
Making her Halloween costume didn’t magically make us understand each other better, but it did bring us that much closer.
I can’t wait to see what costume she picks this year.
