Peak Summerween?!? 🎃​🏝️​

What are the vibes for Summerween 2026? Is this going to be the year that Summerween takes over from the 4th of July (extra difficult this year due to the 250 celebrations)... or did the Summerween hype peak last year?

If Summerween means we get more summer-themed horror releases or practical effect workshops, count me in. Otherwise, I think the authentic October vibe is hard to beat.

Summerween is a tough sell. True horror requires a chill in the air, not the sticky heat of July.

For collectors spooky season always starts July 5th. That's when stores like Dollar General and Wallgreens switch over to Halloween content.

However if you go by Gravity Falls, Summerween is June 22nd.

To me Sumerween is nebulous and can last all summer.

Price Chopper and Market 32 grocery stores put out Pumpkin spice doughnuts, pumpkin pies, and Apple cider doughnuts on August 1st.

The first Spirit Halloween brick and mortar stores usually open for the season in late July.

Hocus Pocus, Fright Night (original), Lost Boys, and Ghostbusters, and Ghostbusters 2 were all summer releases and have summer anniversary re-releases (except Hocus Pocus which gets autumn theatrical re-releases despite first premiering in July).

Summerween seemed to do really well last year. Aurelio Voltaire even released a Summerween album with songs like Monster's Holiday and Goths in a Graveyard. And there are older Summerween songs like The Creature Stole my Surfboard.

Summer is when the original Fright Night and Lost Boys were released along with Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters 2, and Hocus Pocus. The season didn't hurt hose movies (except Hocus Pocus. It took over a decade for Disney to realize we loved it).

A chill in the air and autumn leaves rustling with pumpkins on porches is my favorite ambiance but summers can be spooky too. A moon drenched beach as a fog rolls in off the water. Bats waking for the evening to hunt at dusk over a mountain lake. The sudden onset of a late summer storm as the cool air comes in to meet the heat.

Making s'mores or roasting marshmallows or potatoes over an evening camp fire as someone tells ghost stories.

Since childhood summer has been the time I associate with taking the book, Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Treasury, to sleep overs, and almost ritualistically re-watching The Lost Boys with people I love.

The first time I read Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles (At the time there were only five of them) I read them through the summer at age fourteen, while visiting my grandfather's house. Someone had a photo of me sprawled out on a trampoline with my nose stuck in The Queen of the damned. I had devoured The Vampire Lestat in just four days and would go on to re-read that one about six more times in the 90s.

So despite their association with traditional Halloween, thanks to The Lost Boys, Fright Night, Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, and the nocturnal habits of bats over Sacandaga lake (where my grandfather's house was) when I'd swim as the bat colonies would come out to hunt, I heavily associated summer with vampires. Despite the shorter nights. After the June Solstice the nights get longer again anyway.

Any season can be spooky if you let it. Spring is the hardest one to make spooky but it's not impossible.