THE GOAN | MAPUSA
Rain or no rain, the party never stops along Goa’s Anjuna-Vagator coastal belt and Halloween has only added more fuel to the revelry.
What began as a Western festival of fright and frolic has turned into yet another opportunity for coastal clubs to cash in, keeping the nightlife alive and throbbing, much to the dismay of local residents.
Every year on October 31, Halloween gives Goa’s coastal entertainment hubs a reason to stretch the weekend into a carnival of costumes, music and marathon parties.
This year, the scene is no different. Clubs from Anjuna to Vagator are rolling out multi-day Halloween bashes, complete with international DJs, psychedelic beats and elaborate themes designed to lure partygoers from across the country.
The House of Chapora is calling its event the ‘House of Halloween’, while Incognito is going with ‘Psyloween’. Both promise to keep the crowd grooving from 9 pm on Friday till the early hours of Saturday.
Romeo Lane, right on Vagator beach, is branding its celebration as ‘The Haunted Madquerade’, while Fiturr in Anjuna is taking it a notch higher with a weekend-long ‘Let’s Burnch Witches’ event that begins Friday morning and runs till Sunday evening. Dynamo joins the line-up with its ‘Deadly Disco’.
Several other nightclubs and restaurants are gearing up to host their own themed-night parties on the occasion.
The marketing blitz has been in full swing for weeks, with social media flooded with posters and invites to themed events featuring techno and trance.
For the young crowd – mostly from Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad – these Halloween nights are a perfect excuse to dress up, dance and dive into the heady coastal party culture that has made North Goa a hotspot for nightlife.
But for locals, it’s the same nightmare in a new costume.
“Almost every club in this belt is hosting Halloween parties. It’s a Western concept that’s been fully commercialised here. For us residents, it just means another round of sleepless nights,” said Jawish Moniz, a local resident who has been vocal against loud music and illegal activities in the area.
The glamour of these parties often masks a darker reality.
Activists and law enforcement officials say that such high-energy nights often blur the line between entertainment and excess.
The recent arrest of Danish Chikna, an alleged aide of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim and a suspected drug kingpin operating out of Goa, has reignited concerns about how deeply drugs are woven into the party circuit.
“Halloween or no Halloween, the parties never stop. From Anjuna to Vagator and even up to Siolim and beyond, loud music goes on all night,” said Desmond Alvares, another long-time resident and activist.
For club owners, Halloween is business – another themed event to draw crowds and boost revenue. For locals, it’s another sleepless weekend under the spell of loud beats and flashing lights.
As Goa’s coastal belt gears up for yet another round of Halloween madness, one thing is certain – while the party never stops, neither does the pain for those forced to live with the noise.
