by Chamberlain Zulauf
“I’m on spooky vibes all year, really. It’s just in October I can let it shine,” said Juliet Marvelli— the Halloween issues Folk of ‘Noke.
“I love all things scary. Scary movies, scary vibes, scary decorations, all of it. I’m into scary books too, like Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe. I started decorating the house more than a month ago,” continued Juliet.
Her love of spooky szn shows. Driving down Craig Avenue it’s easy to take a guess which house Juliet lives in. She has the deck fully adorned with bones hanging from the ceiling with complimentary spider webs on the railing, orange decoration lights, a half-buried zombie carcass in the yard (cleverly named Marcus), and a headless door attendant.
The crown jewel of Juliet’s spooky ensemble is a giant clown keeping watch over passersby, which she brought from home.
“[the clown] doesn’t have a name. I’m not good at clown names which is weird because I love clowns,” said Juliet.
The show continues inside too. Other than the life size cutout of Shaq in the main hallway an additional roommate of Juliet’s is Billy the Skeleton: pictured drinking ‘spooky borg.’
Going hard for Halloween is a tradition Juliet started at home in Quakertown PA.
“Back home we do a haunted house in our garage. We’ve been doing that since fifth grade. Trick or treaters go through, and parents love to send their kids in because they know they’re going to get really scared… and hopefully cry, the parents just laugh. It’s really funny. The parents will be like ‘you did great this year!’ as their kids are bawling their eyes out.
We have a fog machine and strobe lights. Everything. My favorite one was a few years ago. We did a horror movie theme, and I was Hannibal Lecter. The kids had to reach into a cage to get their candy and I would scare them by making that sound he makes from that one scene… I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti FTFTFTFTFT!” said Juliet. “I’ve been Hannibal Lector a few times actually. I have a strait jacket and everything.”
This year Juliet has a few costumes ready for action. She’s most excited to dress up as Homer Simpson though, complete with makeup and a bald cap.
Given one choice for Best Halloween Candy, Juliet says her favorite are the mini boxes of nerds.
“The pink one’s are my favorite. I guess they’re strawberries?” said Juliet.
Over fall break Juliet took some time to relax and to help plan for her haunted house. Although she hasn’t been home for Halloween in a few years she still likes to be involved. This year’s theme is haunted asylum, which will take the better part of an entire weekend to set up.
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Moving away from Halloween, Juliet is an inspired maroon. With a major in creative writing and a concentration in screen studies a dream job for her would be movie production. Readers might expect her to want to work in the horror genre, but she has a vision beyond that.
“I like how certain production companies have niches, like A24 has their niche. I really like gangster movies, so it’d be awesome to make a home for those kinds of movies. It’s a big dream but you know!” said Juliet.
In addition to her studies Juliet is also a member of the Roanoke Review and president of Hillel where she helps plan Shabbat and works to spread awareness about antisemitism.
“Antisemitism has always been a constant news piece, especially recently because of a Ye (womp womp), so I feel like it’s important to keep people woke on campus. So that’s to come, it was a big conversation topic with us this week,” said Juliet.
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Juliet’s favorite college memory is all the times she’s played board and card games with her friends. Finally, a piece of advice she has for fellow Maroons is to,
“Have fun but not too much fun. Make sure you go to your classes!”
