Five Backpackers’ Halloween Parties to Wake the Dead
It’s the middle of October, the nights are drawing in and… [Insert series of tired Halloween puns here.] Anyway, hostels all over the world are dusting off their decorations in gleeful anticipation of one of the most decadent and, frequently, downright depraved nights of the backpacking year: Halloween.
When it comes to a big party, most hostels don’t need to be asked twice. But there’s something about hostels and Halloween that go together like, well, two things that go together really well.
So if you’re within striking distance of one of these hostels come Halloween, you’d be mad (but not in a terrifying murderous rampage way) if you didn’t start getting a costume together and drawing on your reserves of courage. After all, the very worst that’ll come of it is a truly horrible hangover. Probably.
1. Generator Hostel, London
“Be afraid, be very afraid” the flier reads, somewhat ominously. And, as anyone who’s ever experienced a 
happy hour there will testify, it’s with good reason, too: The Generator Hostel practically wrote the book on how to throw a good backpackers’ party. And this year’s Halloween looks like it will be a case in point. The party gets underway in the Generator Bar at 9pm and, in true Generator style, will stumble its way, bleary-eyed and blinking, into the early hours of Saturday morning.
2. Nathan’s Villa Hostel, Krakow
Nathan’s Villa has got Halloween Party 2008 written all over it. You can spend the afternoon happily drifting around the creepy Remuh Cemetery like a lost EMO kid, before nipping into one of Kazimierz’s atmospheric old drinking dens. Then it’s a case of everyone back to Nathan’s for the main event: the bitterly contested ‘Best Outfit Competition’, and bathtubs full of free punch.
3. Caledonian Backpackers, Edinburgh
From grave robbing duo Burke & Hare, to beaky plague doctor, John Paulitious, and the subterranean gloom of Mary King’s Close, the streets of Edinburgh are splattered with more gory goings-on than you can shake a stick at. Caledonian Backpackers are looking to really tap into this wellspring of Gothic horror for their Halloween party, and celebrate it the only way they know how: with the party to end all parties.
(On this note, a word of warning, however: the HostelBloggers crew aren’t exactly shrinking violets, but after a couple of nights of punishment in their bar, we were forced to admit defeat and slink off whimpering, with pounding heads and tails firmly stuck between our legs.)
4. Loki Hostel, Mancora
Halfway around the world in Cusco (and Lima and La Paz), Loki Backpackers would give Caledonian Backpackers a good run for their money in a party hostels battle royale. And though the surfing beaches of Mancora aren’t quite the traditional image of a gloomy, mist-enveloped Halloween, by tying the event in with Loki del Mar’s official opening party, all the signs are pointing to a night to remember!
5. Nomads Capital Backpackers, Wellington
Nomads Capital are really letting it all hang out this year - in the alluring form of a Rocky Horror Picture Show Party. Held in their on-site bar, Blend, it promises an intoxicating Halloween cocktail of “warm waters of sins of the flesh - erotic nightmares beyond any measure…” So it sounds pretty good, then!
Altogether now: it’s just a jump to the left, and then a step to the riiiiiiiiight…
[...] our round-up of the top backpackers’ parties over Halloween, I’ve discovered more great events coming up to celebrate this often overlooked [...]