From New York With Love: Halloween

Photos by Olivia Merola

November 1, 2025

Dear Reader,

I remember one Halloween, maybe 2007 or so, getting ready for the much-anticipated Middle School Fall Festival, the one night we stayed at school after dark, dressed up, and pretended our teachers were real people outside of the classroom. We thought it was the coolest thing, like the rules of our universe had shifted.

My mom came with me one year. I still remember her entrance down the white banister staircase at home, like a runway. She peeked through the curve of the stairs in a light blue wool skirt and blood-splattered suit jacket, black crows stitched up and down her arms. Her blonde hair effortlessly swirled into a perfect’ 60s updo. I didn’t get it at the time, but she was dressed as Melanie Daniels from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Iconic.

Every Halloween makes me think of that year. I like to hope I carry some of my mother’s creativity. I always dress up, and I love the theater of it all, the way everyone becomes someone else for a night, or maybe a part of themselves they want to wear proudly. And no one does it like New York City. I have that natural bias. The city is camp.

I spent this Halloween weekend at the NY Philharmonic, watching a screening of Hitchcock’s Psycho with Bernard Herrmann’s score performed live. In typical New York fashion: a horror classic meets a full string orchestra? I’ll be there.

In all honesty, I hadn’t seen Psycho until tonight, and I’m glad I waited for this medium. Those infamous slashing strings, a true leitmotif, screeched against Hitchcock’s control of suspense. You could feel the room want to cheer for the terror of those famous few measures.

With only a string orchestra, Herrmann’s score still felt massive. The palette was dark and ominous, contoured like the film’s black-and-white itself. Even without knowing the movie, the moment the conductor lifted the baton I knew to pay attention. It felt like being let in on a secret a beat before the answer arrived.

What stuck with me wasn’t only the legendary shower scene--it was the psychiatrist. As the score and the film reached their climax, his long, clinical breakdown of the “mother” persona and how it consumes Norman Bates locked me in. That’s the moment I love in psychological thrillers: when the floor drops out, and the hushed “damn” when the all the pieces in the story line up.

And then the ending. Norman in the station, swaddled in a police blanket, while “Mother” narrates the thoughts he won’t admit. He lifts that curled smile, eyes locked on the lens, and the strings keep their eerie sheen steady to the closing frame. I’m still thinking about that final image.

I’d never seen Psycho before, but I left impressed by how lean it all is. A stripped-down score, a classic slasher told without embellishments, plus a new Halloween costume for 2026…

Between us, I’m torn between Marion Crane (shower scene, of course), or a full revival of my mother’s Melanie…

 I’ll let you know next year,    

 Olivia