In the depths of an indigo witching hour, the idea of a candlelit Halloween in the Big Apple can’t help but conjure the nocturnal poets in each of us. As Ned’s Club NoMad transformed into “The Dead Poets Society” on a starry Halloween, party-goers celebrated and bumped to the beat against one another, wrapping flailing arms, verse, and meter around a single night that they yearned would last forever.

With the musical expertise of DJs Austin Millz and TOKiMONSTA, the dancefloor—blending Keatsian dark academia with post-urban techno—only further surrealized as the night bled deeper into dawn.

Aerialists slung themselves dramatically overhead. Decor ornamented the scene in literary reference. Tarot readers and actors in the shadowy corners lured guests away from the sea of dancing and cocktails, into the dark romances and privacy of mystic encounter, toeing the blurry lines between party and performance. 

The Ned, regardless of the night’s temporal condition, knows how to pack a house—to tell a spellbinding tale rooted in a particular magic that transcends time until becoming, eerily, folkloric.