It is the night when it is O.K. to stare, though not for too long; when panhandlers struggle to get a word in edgewise; when the Grim Reaper stops to refill his MetroCard.
Of course the holiday is different here, where generations of children have mined apartment buildings for candy with ruthless efficiency. But everyone has to get to the party, the parade, the next home on the list. And in New York, quite often, they get there on the subway.
So it was on Thursday that the city found the intimate quarters of a train ride, converted to an annual ritual that amplifies the captivity. There were the revelers with little transit choice, their wings and flaps and overlong superhero capes too cumbersome for a cab, yet too fragile for a stroll in the soggy weather.
And there were the costume-less few who, like it or not, were thrust into Halloween gathering, jockeying for seats with a heavyset Zorro, an African-American Elvis, a possibly ironic Tim Tebow.
At times, attire appeared tailored to the local audience. Matt Zimmerman, 35, a rider on the E train, was dressed as the controversial police practice of stop-and-frisk: he ironed a red Stop sign, with the word “Frisk” etched inside, onto a white T-shirt.
“It’s a protest costume,” he said, producing two small baggies of fake drugs from his back pocket. The substances were fish food and nondairy creamer, he said.
On the L train, Megan Sullivan, 28, a comedian from Bushwick, Brooklyn, had painted a blackened nose and wagging tongue on her face, feeding the hipster stereotype of narrowly targeted humor.
“I’m my own dog,” she said. “Only I get it.”
Often, the riders appeared to blend in without incident. A French maid in flip-flops expertly steered a stroller through the underground masses at 42nd Street. A cave man checked the weeknight service changes at Sixth Avenue.
Here was Carmen Sandiego, international mystery woman, giggling in plain sight near Herald Square, in an F train car that smelled of alcohol and energy drinks. And there was the pilot at West Fourth Street, finishing her cigarette on the platform.
Even the station detritus spoke of a night well-lived: a pink mask, a red feather, the plastic prongs of a devil’s pitchfork.
There was just one costume selection more popular than the underworld’s best-known occupant, according to a tally compiled across a half-dozen lines throughout the night. Forty-four riders dressed as cats, excepting a Cat in the Hat and a cat-unicorn hybrid, compared with 27 devils and seven characters from the television series “Breaking Bad.”
Perhaps the most creative outfit was found aboard an F train near Lafayette Street. Here, passengers snapped pictures of Kate Hruska, 25, from Chelsea, whose imagining of the celebrity Kim Kardashian required two balloons inside the back of her pants and fifteen carrots dangling from her left hand.
“It’s a 15-carrot ring,” Ms. Hruska said.
Occasionally, the holiday produced some trying moments. Wonder Woman struggled to swipe herself into the Times Square station. Superman fumbled many of his pocket contents beside a No. 7 train platform.
At Union Square, Jessica Callaghan, 21, cast as the precocious sleuth Nancy Drew, trained her magnifying glass on a flier posted near the turnstiles. It said a 72-year-old man had gone missing.
“Mystery!” she said, thumbing through a small notebook.
After 11 p.m., an overstuffed L train car, bound for Brooklyn, became consumed by the shouts of a man dressed as a pregnant nun — “No one can be courteous and get up for a pregnant lady?” — as Craig Cacciola, 41, from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, slumped against a horizontal pole, his eyes bloodshot.
“Sort of par for the course on the L train,” he said.
By the end of the ride, one of the nun’s friends had delivered a far graver transit indignity: placing a sheet reading “Banksy Did It Better” inside the car’s overhead ad space, obscuring half of the well-moisturized face of Dr. Jonathan Zizmor, the subway system’s resident dermatologist.
On the Lower East Side, though, harmony persisted. Dusty Rhodes, 45 and homeless, played a tenor saxophone on the F train’s uptown platform, as two women — one channeling the Ziggy Stardust persona of David Bowie, the other painted to appear undead — descended the stairs.
Mr. Rhodes unfurled a sultry solo, cocking the instrument skyward as the women drew near. And then they were dancing, one at each side of him, slithering to the floor and back up again, as a friend reached for a tip.
“They act out the musical scenery I create,” Mr. Rhodes said once the women were gone. “Like, ‘This music goes great with our costumes!’”
Soon there was another clack on the stairs, and Mr. Rhodes lifted the sax to his lips. Iron Man was in the building.
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