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You HAD to Be There

- By Yana Grebenyuk / With reporting by Antonio Ferme & Kat Pettibone

THE MOMENT: With Love, Laughs and Fake Fog, Modern Family Embraced Halloween 15 Years Ago

"I realize it is a crazy-ass holiday for a grown woman to care about this much, but it is my crazy-ass holiday," Claire (Julie Bowen) groused to her indifferent loved ones in Modern Family's Oct. 27, 2010, episode, "Halloween." And so a spooky tradition began with a haunted house fail (Claire), an ill-advised superhero costume at work (Jesse Tyler Ferguson's Mitch) and a dubious choice to dress as Mother Teresa "back when she was hot" (Sarah Hyland's Haley). "We'd always had fun," Bowen tells Us, "but this one, we were like, Something's happening."

WHO WAS INVOLVED

The cast was coming off a triumphant first season that won the ABC show an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. In other words, Ed O’Neill, Sofía Vergara, Bowen, Ty Burrell, Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet, Hyland, Ariel Winter, Nolan Gould and Rico Rodriguez couldn’t have been hotter. Why not dress ’em up in silly costumes?