Every year, winning Halloween is getting harder and harder. With people’s endless creativity and willingness to put a smile on everyone’s faces, making a good Halloween costume is an art form in itself.

And this year, just like previous years, people were more than happy to take it a step further when creating their spooky looks. From the Gossip Girl meme and the real life Mr Proper incarnation to Van Gogh’s sunflowers infamously vandalized by Just Stop Oil activists, there’s everything in this collection of insane Halloween costumes: 2022 edition–the sheer level of quirkiness and absolute relevance to the times we’re living in.

Scroll down to see what people came up with this year and upvote your favorite eye-catchers that stole everyone’s hearts on this year’s Halloween.

#1 Weather Reporter During Halloween

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#2

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#3 I Normally Don’t Make Halloween Costumes But I Love The Way This One Turned Out!

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Lauren McMenemy, a south London-based writer of gothic-influenced folk horror and an editor of Trembling With Fear, HorrorTree.com’s weekly zine full of dark fiction stories, told Bored Panda that just like for many other horror aficionados, Halloween is her favorite time of year, “if only because I get to indulge all of my spookiness.” Lauren is also a creative coach with more than 20 years’ experience in journalism and marketing, and she is a host with the London Writers Salon’s daily virtual writers' hour sessions.

When it comes to celebrating Halloween, Lauren enjoys the creativity in a lot of house decorations you see at this time. “It’s not as prevalent where I live, but I do appreciate the efforts I see online. Did you see the family who had a floating Max from Stranger Things in their driveway?! That was awesome,” she said.

#4 Chocolate Lady From Spongebob Squarepants

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#5 We Get Told That We Look Alike All The Time, So This Costume Seemed Inevitable

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#6 Mr. Clean Made "Sponge" Cakes To Help Clean Up All The Blood This Halloween!

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“Jack o’ lanterns are also a creative highlight - the efforts some go to with them are just incredible. Even trick-or-treating can encourage a community feeling. But there are also some of the really innocent party games that are fun, like bobbing for apples,” Lauren told Bored Panda and added that her husband grew up in the Middle East in the 1980s where “bobbing for apples at home was really the only Halloween tradition he could indulge in; he has very fond memories of it.”

#7 Van Gogh’s Vandalized Sunflowers

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On the other hand, there are many Halloween skeptics who see the celebration as just another opportunity for excess consumerism and waste. Lauren argues that inevitably, when something becomes commercial, it can easily become overdone, tacky, or even ridiculous.

“There is quite a bit of this in Halloween these days - heck, I was on public transport on Saturday night with a lot of very drunk people in costumes! It is increasingly seen as a time to dress up and party.”

#10 My Halloween Costume

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#12 The Gossip Girl Meme

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However, Lauren said she would ask critics of Halloween to look deeper than scratching the surface and look for the origins of the celebrations. Like many things, there is folklore and ancient traditions behind the scenes.”

In fact, “Halloween gets its beginnings in the ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain, where people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. This is, after all, the time when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, and our ancestors had their own ways to try to ward off evil spirits looking to wreak havoc on their livelihoods,” Lauren explained.

#13 My Halloween Costume

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#15 Spirited Away

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And for those who still think that Halloween is a modern invention, let us tell you that even trick-or-treating is centuries old. “It comes from the Scottish and Irish tradition of guising, where people would go from house to house and put on a small performance to be rewarded with food or treats. It’s definitely not as overblown as, say, Christmas!” Lauren concluded.