A promotional photo of two performers outdoors at night, standing in front of an historic red brick building. The subjects wear high-contrast outfits with black and white hair, red lips, and dramatic makeup.
Credit: Robert Retana Photography / Hallucination Before Christmas

The club scene is riddled with kitschy themed “raves,” that could never—even collectively—hold their own against Tampa’s famed “Hallucination Before Christmas” party that’s spent the last three decades bringing Halloween and the holidays together for charity.

The 2025 installment of includes nearly 40 artists spread across four rooms, including Boys Noize Records alum Josh Wink (“Higher State of Consciousness”) along with Chicago house legend Gene Farris, Glastonbury and Burning Man alum Left/Right (stylized in all-caps), plus Hallucination OGs DJ Monk, DJ Three and Oona Dahl.

Not content to be just the most balls-to-the-wall audio-visual mindfuck, Hallucination also doubles as one of the heftiest holiday food drives in the Bay area, having collected more than 2,000 pounds of canned goods last year alone.

Tickets for the Hallucination Before Christmas happening  Saturday, Dec. 13 at The Castle in Ybor City are still available and start at $40.

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This article appears in Dec. 04 – 10, 2025.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...