Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

We have a couple of confessions to make. Caitlin’s parents dressed her up as a cow for her first Halloween. Yes, a cow. Her brother, on the other hand, was a pumpkin, and her youngest brother got to be Buzz Lightyear. Ashley wore a flamingo costume every year until it no longer fit, and then it was passed on to be her poodle Misty’s costume.

As bizarre as our childhood costumes were, they were essential to one of our favorite parts of Halloween—pretending to be something that we’re not. Halloween, unlike other holidays that bring people together within the home, is about exploring the scary and unfamiliar. We stayed out past our bedtimes, explored the neighborhood, approached creepily decorated front doors to ask strangers for candy and ate our weight in our sweet bounty.

What happened to that tradition? In college, Halloween seems to be more of an occasion for costumed binge drinking than celebrating the October season’s deliciousness and spookiness.

Sometimes, we wish we had young siblings to take trick-or-treating so it would be acceptable for us to dress up and ring the doorbells of complete strangers in hopes of free candy. But, since trick-or-treating isn’t acceptable for 21-year-olds, we decided to channel our inner kid in the November issue of Towerview.

Published the day before Halloween, this issue rediscovers the spirit of Halloween at Duke. Our editors went on a ghost tour and pub crawl (p. 5), and the Watch List presents the 10 most-haunted places on and around campus, ranging from a room full of brains in the Medical School to eerie dorms on East Campus (p. 8). Kasper Kubica explored the underground culture of illegal pets at Duke (p. 18), which explains why we have a parakeet posing on a pumpkin as our cover. Danielle Muoio interviewed descendents of the Italian stone masons who built the Duke Chapel and its creepy crypts in the Gothic style, (p. 15), and got an inside look at a room in the Medical School restricted to outsiders: the cadaver storeroom and gross anatomy laboratory (p. 26). The Inquisitor rounds out the issue with Duke faculty and staff sounding off about their preferred superpowers.

To our readers, enjoy these spooky stories! We wish you a mischievous Halloween, filled with flamingo-clad poodles.