Pumpkin Spice and Existential Dread: Why Gen Z Romanticizes Spooky Season Like No Other Generation

It’s mid-October, and across the internet, Gen Z is in full seasonal formation. Thrifted ghost candles are flickering on bookshelves, haunted house vlogs set to Lana Del Rey, and TikToks rating Halloween-themed Trader Joe’s snacks with near-academic rigor.

This is not your casual, throw-on-a-costume-and-call-it-a-day Halloween. This is a curated, months-long aesthetic takeover. And no generation has ever committed to spooky season with this much intention.

From #WitchTok spell jars to skeleton-themed espresso cups, Gen Z doesn’t just celebrate Halloween. They romanticize it. And for a generation that’s grown up online, under pressure, and in a state of near-constant societal whiplash, spooky season has become more than a holiday. It’s a way of reclaiming joy, fear, and identity on their terms.

So why, exactly, has Halloween become the emotional anchor of fall for an entire generation? Why is a season built on fear… oddly comforting?

The Era of the Curated Season

Halloween has always been a holiday. For Gen Z, it’s a personal brand.

Scroll through TikTok right now and you’ll find meticulously color-graded “spooky day in my life” vlogs. There’s a formula: a pumpkin cream cold brew, a walk through a cemetery “for mental health,” a thrifted sweater with bats on it, and maybe a cozy horror movie night where The Craft or Jennifer’s Body plays in the background. Fall is no longer just fall. It’s spooky season, and it has a specific look, sound, and mood.

The hyper-curation isn’t accidental. Gen Z came of age online, where seasons arrive earlier and last longer. Algorithms serve you autumn in August. By September, Halloween is a full-blown aesthetic economy. And by mid-October, it’s a lifestyle with daily rituals: pumpkin-scented everything, horror podcasts as white noise, and a collective agreement that the more cobwebs, the better.

This seasonal commitment also gives structure in a time when everything else feels vague. In a world of constant flux (climate anxiety, political burnout, job precarity, and all the other fun things), spooky season is refreshingly predictable. It comes every year. It asks nothing of you except full commitment to the bit. And Gen Z? They always commit to the bit.

Halloween as Identity Playground

For Gen Z, Halloween is also a sanctioned space for transformation. A time when the pressure to present a polished, consistent version of yourself lifts, and self-expression gets to be more fluid, more theatrical, more free.

Unlike other seasonal events that come with rules—family obligations, social expectations, the pressure to be cheerful—Halloween is permission. To be strange. To be soft. To be subversive. And for a generation that navigates constant visibility, curated personas, and algorithmic approval, that permission feels rare.

It’s also deeply affirming. For queer and non-binary individuals especially, Halloween offers a kind of expressive safe zone. You’re not “dressing up” as something else. You’re experimenting with who you already are. Gender, aesthetics, power… everything’s on the table. You can be as dramatic or understated as you want. There’s no wrong answer, and no need to explain.

Even beyond identity, Halloween invites emotional flexibility. You can channel chaos or melancholy, or absurdity without it being pathologized. You can play with darkness in a way that’s structured, safe, even joyful.

It is about reclaiming control over how a person can present, how they feel, and how they process a world that often doesn’t make room for nuance.

Seasonal Spending, Skeletons Included

Let’s be honest: spooky season isn’t just cute, it’s commercial. And Gen Z, while self-aware, isn’t above buying into it. Quite literally.

Every October, the economy gets a little darker… in palette and in profit. Seasonal drops hit earlier every year, with Halloween-themed collections landing in stores as early as late August. From niche Etsy candle makers to mega retailers like Target and Starbucks, everyone wants a piece of the aesthetic, and Gen Z is more than willing to pay for it.

According to the National Retail Federation, Halloween spending in the U.S. hit over $12 billion in 2023, with Gen Z emerging as a major contributor. Even food and beverage have jumped on the seasonal aesthetic train. Pumpkin cold brew has practically become a personality trait. Every coffee shop now has a “spooky latte,” and TikTok will absolutely tell you where to find the “most haunted croissant” in your city.

But what separates Gen Z’s spending from previous generations is the why. They’re not buying to show off. They’re buying to build mood, identity, and shareable moments. Consumption is less about status and more about narrative. It’s not “look what I bought,” it’s “look how I’m living—right now, in this version of myself.”

Of course, they know it’s a little ridiculous. But that’s part of the fun. Halloween has become a cultural sandbox where fear is stylized, spending is seasonal, and everything feels just theatrical enough to excuse the excess.Why It Actually Matters

At a glance, Gen Z’s obsession with spooky season might look like another aesthetic microtrend. A harmless, overdecorated blip on the cultural calendar. But zoom in, and it reveals something deeper: a generation using seasonal ritual to create structure, self-expression, and small-scale joy in a world that often feels too big and too unstable to manage.

In a culture that moves too fast and demands too much, spooky season gives Gen Z a timeline they can count on. A season they can shape. A mood they can opt into. It’s cozy. It’s weird. It’s slightly haunted. And maybe that’s the most relatable feeling of all.

So yes, it’s a little extra. It’s also completely understandable. Because if the world is going to be chaotic anyway, you might as well light a pumpkin-scented candle and dress for the occasion.