• Luigi holding green shell
• Maleficent w/ Optimus Prime
• inflatable riding chicken
• inflatable riding pteranodon
• classic Link + BotW blue outfit Link (but w/ green hat)
• five witches w/ roving candy wagon. It was playing "Billie Jean" on a return trip and "I Can't Help Falling in Love with You" the next
• Luffy enthusiastically carrying Straw Hat Pirates flag + Usopp w/ that sun mask he wears; later on, they had some unbranded pirates with them
• pumpkin sweatshirt + pumpkin sweatshirt w/ hat and stroller + Red Riding Hood
• a handmaid from The Handmaid's Tale? That's dark. This was a kid
• friendly Dracula beanbag
• a cowboy. Not notable usually, but this is in Maine, not notably cowboy country
• inflatable Spongebob
• inflatable unicorn
• woman in fluorescent lime green fuzzy bear stole draped over her head + Kirby tee?
• '60s hippie with excellent flower power color + mod hat
• lite-up transparent umbrella w/ streamers that was unclear at first but turned out upon later inspection to be a jellyfish, since they forgot their googly eyes. The accompanying child had a sea blue towel wrapped over them, no explanation
• child in disturbingly realistic Donatello mask with protruding middle-aged jawline
• hunter, male
• baby skunk (being carried)
• family of bears. Watch out for the hunter
• a bunch of female boxers in matching pink satin robes. Is this a reference to something? Unclear
• Winifred Sanderson mom + sea turtle dad + baby pineapple
• girl in yellow raincoat w/ short bright blue hair? I feel I've seen this design before but can't recall what it is. Joy from Inside Out? This was a longer bob, though. It looked like Coraline, but I don't think she's one for primary colors
• a sea creature-themed costume with seaweed-color hair and iridescent blue tentacles at the bottom. She wasn't a sea creature per se but the costume looked good
• inflatable mummy (off, being dragged)
• mori kei Jedi (in beige sundress w/ sunhat + mushroom canvas bag) w/ rainbow lightsaber, take that
• a young Sailor Moon
• horse or jackal with flesh stripped from its face
• man in hardhat + jumpsuit with a sign saying "OIL/TEL TRASH"???
• cute little blonde pumpkin
• Grim Reaper w/ fashionable robe in red + black
• Hollow Knight
• Demogorgon
• inflatable sumo wrestler
• pregnant woman in sweatshirt w/ little skeleton on stomach; I thought that was good
• friendly blue baby robot that I thought I recognized but couldn't place and later realized kind of looked like one of PS3's dumb enemies
• two Lokis side by side, which is show canon accurate, I suppose
• tiny Charmander
• two Apes from the famed Planet, or maybe just Professor Bobos, holding out pillowcases for candy
• six of Snow White's seven dwarves, female and color-coded by neon-color stocking hat and tulle skirt
• Mona Lisa & Leonardo + little tree & Bob Ross
• beer, hamburger, pizza, taco, hot dog
• two adults in deely-boppers
• someone in a lime green pantsuit, glasses with thick red frames, and a shoulder-length blonde wig? I think they were mixing up Hillary Clinton with Sally Jesse Raphael
• also, man, referencing Sally Jesse Raphael in 2023
• lineman
• red M&M + defunct brown M&M
• Sans
• gentleman ladybug w/ bowtie
• adult Scooby-Doo standing on hind legs holding a poodle's leash; a Goofy-&-Pluto abomination against humanity
• killer Jawa w/ red light-up eyes, black robe, & machete
• inflatable...man in black? I don't know what this was. The costume had the some dimensions as the inflatable sumo, but it was completely black and featureless. I don't get it
• something I wrote down as "eyeball Michael Reynolds"; it was a ribbed seaweed-color bodysuit in a Michael Reynolds silhouette with a bunch of eyeballs gathered at the base of the stalk at the top of the head. Could have been a monster from a '70s Sid & Marty Krofft show
• hunter, female
• that Michael Meyers costume from the first movie where he wears a sheet with his victim's glasses, combined with a Blues Brother (the glasses were sunglasses, they were wearing a black fedora, and the sheet was shiny silver)
• hunter, late middle-aged male, w/ cat ears
• there were actually a great number of people who came just wearing their hunting camo & orange as a costume. At first I thought it was just a lazy costume but then recalled this hadn't happened at all in previous years; I wonder if there were some sort of weird point being made
• traditional Robin Hood
• great-looking young female pirate w/ tricorner hat, smart skirt, & cutlass
• Napoleon Dynamite? In this day & age? Plus the kid was like 8
• Starfire? Long red hair + magenta superhero outfit says "Starfire" to me, but the hair was Raggedy Ann-red
• Dad Shaggy carrying little Scooby-Doo
• John Deere tractor stroller
• Master Chief, still
• peacock in silk cape with peacock feathers painted on it; this was cool
• someone with a Ghostface purse
• the two puzzle pieces from last year. Of all the costumes to make a reappearance. Come on
• very small Jason; slightly larger Michael w/ bad Chucky-esque hair day
• mummy animatronic being carried by somebody
• someone walking backwards in an autumn-colored knit mask and orange felt shirt
• old-school Luke Skywalker (this was a kid)
• twin Alice in Wonderlands in matching sky-blue dresses
• furry gray spider w/ red legs
• toddler lions in circus cage stroller
• guy in Harley Davidson riding gear with perfunctory tiny pirate hat stuck on his head as a conciliation
• old-school Leia (this was also a kid)
• a Boston Bruin
• overheard: "'It's-a Mario!' It's just fun to say!"
• a quite beautiful traditional flower princess, with a flower crown w/ veil in back and beautiful coordination of pastel colors
• the chrome Ghostface variant; he must have gotten pretty far in the Battle Pass
• mini Olaf the snowman, but in a traditional triple-snowball construction
• two commercially-produced, almost totally-gray bodysuits very lightly printed that most closely resembled that spider-webbed corpse in the gym from the School Scissors case in World of Horror? I very much doubt that's what they were referencing, but the actual decoration on the bodysuits (worn by two different people in two different parties) was so faint that whatever they were referencing was incomprehensible
• inflatable dino skeleton
• I was missing the guy with a giant stick on his back from a couple years ago, but we got bush man: a guy who just stuck chopped-off, dried-up hydrangea branches all over himself. Actually, this may have been the same guy. Unclear.

This seemed, overall, like the Halloween that wasn't. First, Maine was dealing with the situation with the unapprehended mass shooting suspect right up to just before the holiday. I live over an hour away from where the shooting took place, and yet there were a number of businesses - restaurants, lumberyards - that chose to close for a bit, and a number of events that were rescheduled, just to avoid tempting fate and giving the still-at-large suspect more potential targets by allowing large numbers of people to gather. After that situation resolved, such as it did, there was a cold snap, with temperatures below freezing at nighttime. This didn't dissuade Mainers from Halloween entirely - you gotta learn to do stuff in cold & snow if you want to survive in the state - but it did ensure festivities drew to a close earlier in the evening than usual.

On the personal front, my costume (Medusa) was a pain in the neck - endless accessories, a number of things that didn't work, and one crucial accessory (contacts) that didn't come in time, plus a neckline that wouldn't stay put. I also missed the Halloween weekend parade & party at one of the small towns on the coast I usually attend, as they chose to hold it one week earlier this year. I tried attending a block party they had later on Halloween evening, but as I started to explore what I thought, in daylight, was a rather small neighborhood, I found myself coming across landmarks I didn't recognize. I then found myself lost, wandering around in below-freezing temperatures in a thin pleather jacket for two hours. By the time I got back to my car, I had literally lost fine motor control in my fingers from numbness. If not for directions from a middle-school girl who came up to me, complimented my costume, and offered me some of her candy, I would've been frozen dead on the pavement. So, thank you, kind middle-school girl! You saved Halloween, or at least my incompetent Gorgon hide.

Then I fell ill from the meal I had the next day to celebrate being back in a relatively warm environment to which I was properly oriented, so this article was put on the back burner. Here's hoping next year's better.

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