During the month of October, the state humanities councils combined their love for the humanities with Halloween-themed programs incorporating festivals, haunted houses, spooky stories, and reenactments of frightful tales into their programming.

In Connecticut, the council hosted a Spooktober series, featuring scary games, spooky stories, and a guided tour through a haunted house in their second annual “Night at the Haunted Historical Society.” Storytelling and frightful reenactments of historical tales were shared at the “Weird and Spooky Connecticut” and “Mr. Washington Irving Reading: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” events, along with a council-supported “Haunted at Mill Hill” 9th annual graveyard tour.

In other parts of the country, Arizona Humanities hosted it’s annual “Ghostly Stories Festival,” which featured multicultural story time, arts and crafts, book giveaways, poetry performances, and more. In Kansas, the council supported “Haunting Humanities: Discipline in the Dark,” which included haunting stories and legends of local and international origins with the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas.  And, in South Carolina, Pickens County Library, with support from South Carolina Humanities, hosted the reading discussion, “Legends and Ghost Stories of the South.”