Culture

Teens Are Passing The Time By Running Around In White Sheets And Having ‘Ghost Photoshoots’

Infinitely better vibes than when clowns were running around trying to kill people.

by Michelle Rennex  23 September 2020
ghost photoshoot tiktok

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With COVID-19 still ravaging the US, it’s very likely that Halloween 2020 is going to be cancelled.

With social-distancing recommended to slow the spread of coronavirus, it’s not looking promising that the pandemic is going to be under control by October 31. Really, heading to a bunch of stranger’s houses in one night and people continuously dipping their hands into communal lolly bowls doesn’t sound like the safest activity to do — coronavirus or not.

But instead of sitting down and sulking about missing the spooky event, teens across the globe have begun to hold their own “Ghost Photoshoots” to keep the Halloween spirit alive and well.

The concept is quite simple: Grab a white bedsheet, go to a cool location, snap a few pics and upload it with a vintage edit to TikTok. The only real requirements of the trend are that you need to be dressed as a ghost and you must set the video to Jack Stauber’s ‘Oh Klahoma’ when you share your photos to the app.

The trend actually only started around two weeks ago when @jackjanson88 uploaded his video where he “dressed up as a ghost and took some pics”. Citing Phoebe Bridgers’ Stranger in the Alps album art as the inspiration in the comments on his video, the #GhostPhotoshoot hashtag has now surpassed over two billion views in a fortnight.

Since the original video, heaps of teens have created their own variations of Jack’s Ghost Photoshoot. All using the same song, people have cut eye holes into their sheets or added sunglasses to inject some more personality to their images, while posing alone, with ghost friends or even with pets.

 

While Halloween is an American holiday, Aussies also do love to dress up for the occasion too, with some suburbs even leaning into the concept of trick-or-treating for the kids in their neighbourhoods.

So, some Australians have hopped on the trend, taking their white sheets to the beach, iconic Telstra telephone boxes and Mobil petrol stations. Hell, even Domino’s Australia decided to get in on the trend with some pretty sick pizza recreations of their own.

The trend is all quite wholesome and harmless, as teens across the word just try and have some socially-distanced fun to pass the time. However, there have been some criticisms about people walking around with white sheets over their head.

Some people are concerned that the outfit used in the Ghost Photoshoot trend can easily be mistaken for a Ku Klux Klan member as both wear white sheet-like clothing. But it should be noted that the pointed hood of a KKK outfit are the groups defining feature.

Plus, the  general idea of the “white bedsheet ghost” has been kicking about for years in pop culture and as real-life Halloween costumes.

As The Daily Beast reports, ghosts are often depicted as flowy, white sheets because traditional burial shrouds look awfully similar to the white bedsheets we use today. So it was common for people during the Early Modern Period to report seeing these shrouded beings, which kickstarted the idea that ghosts appear as sheets instead of real people.

Nonetheless, some found the trend insensitive due to the climate we are currently in, with Black Lives Matter protests entering their fourth straight month. Others thought it was just refreshing that teens were engaging in a relatively harmless TikTok trend that didn’t make the older generations “question what’s wrong with today’s teens”.


Whatever your thoughts on the trend, it is pretty fun to watch kids get creative and well, just get to be kids.