From Spooky to Sad: How Halloween Became the Loneliest Day of the Year

When you think of loneliness, what holiday comes to mind? For decades, the undisputed champion of single-person sadness has been Valentine’s Day, with its aggressive onslaught of roses, chocolates, and prix-fixe dinners for two. But a new report has just delivered a shocking twist: there’s a new loneliest day of the year, and it’s the one you’d least expect.

According to a new poll by dating.com, which surveyed over 1,000 single adults, more than half admitted that Halloween is a lonelier holiday for them than Valentine’s Day.

The finding is so counterintuitive that it’s almost baffling. Halloween? The day of irreverent costumes, office parties, and free candy? How could a holiday built on community, creativity, and spooky fun possibly be a source of profound isolation? The report offered an even more heartbreaking detail: some singles admitted they even cry after opening the door to trick-or-treaters.

This jarring revelation was the subject of a stunned discussion on “The View,” where the co-hosts seemed to represent the collective confusion of everyone who has ever enjoyed the holiday.

“This totally surprised me,” said Alyssa Farah Griffin, who recalled her own single days with fondness. “When I was single, it was like, you go out with your girlfriends, you like, go to a party, do group costumes.” Sunny Hostin echoed the sentiment, rattling off a list of communal joys: “You get to eat candy and pass out the candy and drink and hang out, dress up in crazy costumes. I don’t get it.”

For them, and for many, Halloween has always been the anti-Valentine’s Day. It’s a holiday that doesn’t revolve around a romantic partner. It’s about friends, imagination, and social gatherings. Sara Haines summed up this traditional view perfectly: “I never thought of it as a coupling thing. It’s like a creative time to kind of be whatever you want and be out and about.”

So, what changed? How did we get from “group costumes” to “crying at trick-or-treaters”? The answer, it seems, lies in the subtle-yet-crushing pressures of a holiday that has quietly split into two very different experiences.

The first, and most obvious, is the rise of the “couples costume.” In the age of social media, Halloween has become a parade of partnerships. Every scroll through Instagram or X is a barrage of perfectly executed duos: Ken and Barbie, Taylor and Travis, Morticia and Gomez. While the “View” hosts may not see it as a “coupling thing,” the visual pressure to be part of a pair is immense. For a single person, the question is no longer just “What should I be?” but “Who should I be with?” The lack of an answer can feel like a failure.

But the poll’s most devastating clue points to an even deeper source of pain: the trick-or-treaters. The co-hosts, who are all mothers, perhaps overlooked this element. For a single person, especially one who desires a family, opening the door to a parade of adorable children in costumes isn’t just a sweet neighborhood ritual. It’s a gut-punching, 90-minute reminder of a life they don’t have.

This is why Halloween may be so much more painful than Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is explicit. You know it’s coming, you can brace for the romantic onslaught, and you can defiantly celebrate “Galentine’s Day” with friends. But Halloween is a Trojan horse. It arrives under the guise of “fun for everyone,” only to assault you with visions of what you’re missing—not just a romantic partner for a clever costume, but the entire tableau of domestic happiness: the spouse, the children, the home.

The holiday, in essence, has become a mirror. And for many, it’s reflecting back a painful image of being left behind.

As the panel tried to grapple with this modern loneliness, co-host Ana Navarro offered a powerful and poignant cultural counterpoint. She began by sharing her own story of holiday confusion, recalling her first Halloween in 1980 as an eight-year-old immigrant. “We didn’t know what the hell Halloween was,” she explained. “This idea of of costumes and candy and… knocking on strangers’ doors to get candy was really foreign to us. My mother… in desperation… put a sheet over my head and opened two holes.”

From that place of charming cultural bewilderment, she pivoted to a tradition that understands connection on a much deeper level. “It’s very widely celebrated though in Latin America, in Mexico, as Day of the Dead,” she said. Navarro described a holiday that is the polar opposite of the loneliness the poll described. “Everybody comes and it’s like a community thing. They celebrate their dead, they build altars, they dress up as Catrinas… they put pictures of the people that they love who were dead.”

Her point was a beautiful and profound rebuke to modern isolation. In this tradition, you are not defined by who you are (or aren’t) coupled with. You are defined by your connection to your community, your family, and your history. She concluded with a line that silenced the table: “You can’t be lonely with your dead ancestors.”

Perhaps the secret to curing this new Halloween loneliness lies in that very idea: connection. The poll suggests a growing epidemic of isolation, where people feel disconnected from the primary units of partnership and family. Navarro’s perspective suggests a cure: to root oneself in a wider community and a longer story.

The conversation, however, took one final, sharp turn. As the hosts bantered about their own past costumes—Sara Haines fondly remembering her “pregnant caterpillar” and Joy Behar joking about being the old man from “Up”—Behar dropped a truth bomb that put the entire discussion into a sobering new context.

When asked if she ever cried on Halloween, she responded flatly, “I never cried on Halloween. Election day, yes.”

The table erupted in agreement. “The last few elections have been more of a horror show than any Halloween movie,” Hostin chimed in. They recalled how, the day after the 2016 election, Joy Behar literally wore a black veil in her dressing room, a costume that was not for a party, but a profound statement of mourning.

It was a stunning pivot. In an instant, the “loneliness” of being single on a holiday was juxtaposed against the collective despair of a nation grappling with its own identity. Behar’s comment served as a powerful reminder that while personal loneliness is deeply painful, there are larger, more terrifying “real-world horrors” that haunt us all. The fear for the state of the country, the anxiety over a divided political landscape, the dread of what the future holds—these are the things that can make one feel truly, existentially alone, regardless of their relationship status.

In the end, the discussion on “The View” illuminated what this new poll only hinted at. Halloween has become a complex, modern holiday that forces us to confront who we are. For some, it’s a painful reminder of personal loneliness. For others, it’s a creative escape, a time to “be whatever you want,” as Sara Haines said. For Ana Navarro, it’s a link to a powerful tradition of community and remembrance. And for Joy Behar, it’s a fleeting, frivolous distraction from the far scarier things that keep us up at night.

The rise of Halloween as the “loneliest day of the year” isn’t really about ghosts, or candy, or even costumes. It’s a symptom of a deeper isolation, a yearning for connection in a world that feels increasingly disconnected. And as the co-hosts demonstrated, perhaps the only antidote is to do exactly what they did: talk about it.