Superstorm Sandy Made For One Of The Eeriest Halloweens In Recent Memory

Perhaps only rivaled by Halloween 2020, the first of the COVID-19 pandemic, Halloween 2012 in the Northeast was one of the eeriest in recent memory. The holiday fell just two days after Superstorm Sandy made a devastating blow to the area, with President Barack Obama declaring the situation a major disaster for large areas of the U.S. East Coast. The storm, due to its unbelievable size, devastation and proximity to the holiday, was even dubbed the "Frankenstorm."

Many locations up and down the coast as well as inland were still without power on Oct. 31, 2012, and many would be for a week or longer, with more than 800,000 New Yorkers losing power for 10 days, according to utilitydive.com.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie postponed Halloween festivities until the following Monday, citing unsafe conditions throughout the state. Many local governments elsewhere, such as New York and Pennsylvania, canceled Halloween parades and celebrations, warning residents not to go out the night of the 31st as well. For some communities in New England, it was the second Halloween in a row that was canceled or postponed, as a severe nor’easter dumped well over a foot of snow throughout much of the region and left 3 million without power in late October 2011.

And though New York City’s Halloween parade was canceled for the first time in nearly 40 years, some brave New Yorkers, much fewer than during a typical year, ventured out despite downed trees and powerlines and lack of street lights. In some neighborhoods, branches and other storm debris were scattered on sidewalks, forcing into the roadways what few trick-or-treaters were bold enough to don costumes and go door to door seeking sweets.

The images in the slideshow above show the strangeness of Halloween 2012. Many show trick-or-treaters in the less-affected neighborhood of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, where still, trees littered the streets precariously, and costumed youth scampered beneath yellow police tape and dangerously leaning trees. Elsewhere, like in Rockaway Beach, Queens, teens are seen dressed up against a backdrop fire-damaged buildings, like a scene from a horror movie. In Manhattan, viewers can just barely make out two people dressed up as socks in the light of a Halal truck powered by a generator.

Click through the slideshow above for a look back at that bizarre Halloween and the people who refused to let the storm ruin their holiday.

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