Halloween is a celebration of dressing up as someone or something else: characters from cartoons, celebrities or scary creatures. The sky is the limit for what can be turned into a costume, and people don’t dress up only as things with a pulse anymore. Popular costumes used to be household appliances and random objects. Halloween is a holiday that encourages people to be someone else for a day.

Nick Bierwolf, a Weber State University student majoring in mechanical engineering, said he will be dressing up this year as Towelie, a character from the adult cartoon “South Park.”

“Yeah, I am going to a party this weekend for Halloween,” Bierwolf said.

When being invited to a social event that requires dressing up, many people put a lot of planning into their costumes. The initial planning involves what the person is going to dress as. Then comes the details of the costume. Many people want to dress as something unique and creative, while others want to dress as what’s most popular.

According to the Business Insider website, some of the top 20 costumes searched for on Yahoo this month included characters from “The Dark Knight Rises,” such as Catwoman, Bane and Batman; fantasy creatures like zombies, vampires, fairies and mermaids, and characters from series like “Power Rangers,” “The Hunger Games” and “Star Wars.” The top three costume searches on the list were “Monster High,” “Ninjago” and zombies respectively.

Sierra Co, a freshman majoring in journalism, said she will be dressing as a flapper from the ’20s this year.

“It’s fun to be somebody else,” Co said. “I think adults dress up because of the Halloween tradition.”

Kyla Cannon, an English major, will be accompanying Co to Halloween parties. Cannon will be dressing more traditionally as a witch.

“I think adults dress up to be like kids again,” Cannon said. “I guess families do it for the kids and tradition, but adults do it to have fun and for parties, be with friends and stuff.”

Both Co and Cannon will be celebrating Halloween, but not on the actual day. On Halloween day, both will be going to a showing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” where they will both be dressing up as characters from the movie.

Wasayf Albakheet, a freshman majoring in health administration, will be celebrating Halloween for her first time this year. She is originally from Saudi Arabia, where people celebrate a similar holiday of children going door to door, but it’s more traditional in Saudi Arabia that children are given both money and candy.

Albakheet said she plans on dressing up as Mickey Mouse this year. She said she thinks it will be fun to celebrate with her friends and follow the Halloween tradition.