· Home  ·  Features   ·  Creative  Writing    ·   Connections    ·   Letters     ·   Events   ·    Join Red Skies     ·   Submissions

 Halloween Hassle in Salem

 If you don’t already hate Salem in October,
here’s why you should.

By: Jill Dembowski

Something ugly happens in Salem, Massachusetts, when the calendar changes to October. A switch is flipped, and the city puts on a Halloween costume. Salem feels like the mall the weekend before Christmas, only worse. Too many people have no idea what they’re doing. Suddenly, corn stalks are sprouting from street signs and the windows of the shops are littered with orange and black streamers, witches, and cats. The most noticeable change is the traffic. From October 1st to November 1st expect to stop, sit, move inches, scream, honk, flip the bird, and much more.

There are 7,647 undergraduate students that attend SSC. Out of that mass, approximately 6,200 are commuter students -- that is a ton of people that need to get in and out of Salem every day. This is only magnified during the Halloween season, because hundreds of thousands of people are also entering and leaving Salem. So for us commuters who need to get to class on time, it means leaving earlier, getting home later, higher blood pressure and road rage.

Not only is it difficult to deal with other drivers, but the pedestrian tourists are equally rage inducing! They often don’t look before crossing the street and if they do, they just expect the driver to see them and stop. Kristen Byrne, a commuter from Danvers, says, “They just walk right into the street looking at their maps! It is like trying to drive down the middle of the Magic Kingdom in Disney World. They have no respect for the working people and students of the city they are visiting.”

Personally, after dealing with the drivers and the clueless tourists my interest in staying in Salem on Halloween faded quickly. In past years, when Halloween fell on a weekday, I would either skip class or leave school by noon. I was honest and told my professors straight out that I was not attending class because it was Halloween. Students do not have time to sit in traffic. If you’re lucky, and some people are, your professors will cancel class due to the high volume of commuter students who might not make it to class.

Residents who live in the middle of the frenzy are also affected. Kerry Bazinet, an RA in the Bowditch Hall dorms, says, “As an RA, we are on super-duty for Halloween because the holiday is so huge here. So we're pretty much on lockdown starting the 25th until the 1st of November, stopping kids from partying in their room and hunting down kids who have snuck in alcohol, illegal substances, and so forth.” Being an RA is not all that easy to begin with, so with the added craze of Halloween, matters just get worse. The noise from all the traffic isn’t nice either. Bazinet adds, “For Bowditch Hall, right on the street, there are just more honking cars and traffic going by.”

If you have a short road-rage fuse and hate crowds: stay far away from Salem during Halloween. Commuters, remember to take deep breaths and resist your urges to run people over.

Are you going to The Halloween Ball or Dracula’s Castle this month?  You might want to Check out the rules! If you’re looking for a costume party, you don’t have to look very far! Or just have your own!

 Jill Dembowski, is a senior who commutes from Danvers to Salem three times a week, hates the Halloween traffic and always wonders if she is the only one on the road that knows how to drive!