"Monster Mash”
Cranbrook Institute of Science
Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Oct. 24, 2025
“I think Cranbrook did a great job of making even Halloween nerdy,” a friend told me during the Cranbrook Institute of Science’s “Monster Mash,” an adults-only Halloween event at the science and natural history museum. The event was jam-packed with activities, including lectures, pumpkin painting, Halloween-themed games, ghost tours, dancing and more, plus childfree access to the museum.
I arrived a bit late to the three-hour event, so I had to be strategic in choosing my activities. I started with a lecture on the “final girl,” an exploration about the horror movie trope of a single virtuous woman surviving a serial killer determined to take her down. We watched clips from “Psycho,” “Halloween,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Scream,” learning about the stories’ connections with sexuality, the incel-type frustrations of the killers against the virginal protagonists who must watch their less chaste friends get slaughtered.
Afterwards, we did a flashlight ghost tour of spookier parts of the museum, including a stop at a cultural artifacts display where we got a lesson on the meaning, process and trade of shrunken heads. Then we headed to the basement where we heard a couple of ghost stories encountered in the building. This included some aggressive, mysterious knocking and a custodian who cut her employment at the museum short after encountering a strange woman in historical clothes waiting for her on the steps of the observatory at 2 a.m.
One of my favorite parts of the evening was the liquid nitrogen ice cream demonstration, which was exactly what it sounds like – a cool, smoky demo making ice cream with liquid nitrogen, and it was delicious! We also managed to squeeze in a Halloween anagram contest and a game of “Celebrity or Serial Killer?” where you had to guess if childhood photos were of celebrities or serial killers (poor Elizabeth Taylor did not fare well).
The evening closed with a costume contest and a skeleton dance-off, basically a DJ dance party with the option of dancing with skeletons, which my friend and I took full advantage of.
We actually did quite a lot, but if I’d had more time, I would have added the pumpkin painting contest, Halloween trivia, the mummy relay, the Dino Gore Show, the Creepy Cryptids lecture and maybe stargazing in the Observatory to the list. While I do accept responsibility for my own tardiness, I think an extra hour of the event would have allowed for a more relaxed experience to take part in everything, plus time to just explore the museum without kids around. Though I might be a bit special in that regard in wanting to do as much as possible.
It is often the case that adult-only events are simply basic gatherings with alcohol added to the mix, so I appreciate when there are also actual activities to do, and Cranbrook offered plenty. I was a little surprised more weren’t science-themed – a lecture on real science findings with the paranormal or how a dead body breaks down would have been cool, or maybe a demo explaining optical illusions or the science behind special effects in horror movies. But overall, my friends and I had a nice time and appreciated the opportunity to enjoy the fun of a kid-centered space without the kids.
