Only a few years ago, a Halloween party, which was variously viewed as a suspiciously pagan foreign holiday or as sinful, unnecessary and weird, meant arrests in Saudi Arabia.

Now, a government-sponsored "horror weekend" means sold-out costume shops and scary clowns.

This year, it looked like creatures from a haunted house had escaped and taken over parts of the Saudi capital Riyadh. Monsters, witches, and bank robbers were everywhere, according to The New York Times.

Saudi Arabia celebrated the festival of Halloween alongside activities of the Riyadh Season 2022 from October 27 to 29, two days before the Americans' Halloween celebrations.

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"The atmosphere at the weekend is terrifying," the head of the General Authority for Entertainment, Advisor to the Saudi Royal Court, Turki Al-Sheikh, wrote on social media.

However, the government-sponsored event was not, strictly speaking, a Halloween festival. Instead, it was promoted as a horror weekend, conveniently coinciding with the weekend before Halloween.

Some of the revellers seemed to have only a vague idea of what Halloween was, and had come simply to enjoy the atmosphere, reported The New York Times.

Halloween celebrations in Saudi Arabia ignited controversy over what is halal or haram to join the West in celebrating non-Islamic events on social networking sites after pictures and videos of people dressed in costumes for Halloween surfaced.

In 2018, Saudi police raided a Halloween party and arrested people, and ordered women who were dressed in strange clothes to "cover themselves," The New York Times said.

Public Halloween celebrations began in Riyadh for the first time in 2021.

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Halloween is a holiday observed on October 31. In much of Europe and most of North America, observance of Halloween is largely nonreligious. People celebrate it by wearing costumes that mimic the heroes of horror films and superheroes.