Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s ‘devastating’ Halloween call that left them ‘staring anxiously at their phones’

In 2016 – not long after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had started dating – the couple received a "devastating" phone call on their "favourite" holiday that left them shocked. It was Halloween.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle spent their first Halloween as a couple in 2016, with Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank in Toronto. The theme was "Apocalypse", and all of them had gone to the city's Soho House to celebrate the day.

Pictures shown in the Sussexes Netflix docuseries revealed their costumes that night, including the Mad Max one Harry wore, which was borrowed from the actor Tom Hardy, the Mirror reported.

The "devastating" phone call that they received that day is said to have changed their lives forever, and left them worried.

It was a time when Harry and Meghan were still keeping their relationship under wraps. As their relationship grew stronger, the couple started braving the outside world more on their dates. When it came to Halloween, the duo knew they wanted to go out and celebrate.

Authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand said in the biography 'Finding Freedom' that Harry and Meghan were having the "perfect" evening at Soho, where a Halloween party was taking place.

"They especially didn't feel like spending Halloween weekend in hiding, as there was much to celebrate. Some four months into their relationship, they were madly in love and eager to take part in the fun of one of their favourite holidays. The evening of October 29, with Harry in town, the couple decided to go to a big costume party being thrown at Soho House in Toronto," the authors were quoted by the Mirror as saying.

They added, "A cocktail or so into the party, they were both feeling relaxed, absorbing the Halloween spirit. It was possibly the perfect night out - until they received a call from one of Harry's aides at Kensington Palace..."

But what was the news? It wasn't a good one. A newspaper had found out about Harry and Meghan's relationship and had planned to go live with a story the following day.

Prince Harry has also wrote about the incident in his memoir Spare, saying that "everything was rendered moot" the day after the party when news of their relationship broke.

Harry explained: "Well, we said, staring anxiously at our phones, it was going to happen eventually. In fact, we'd had a heads-up that it was likely to happen that day. We'd been tipped, before heading off to the Halloween Apocalypse, that another apocalypse might be coming. More proof that the universe had a wicked sense of humour."

Meghan Markle once appeared on The Ellen Show to tell a flirty story about how she and Prince Harry had snuck out for a costume party before the world knew they were a couple. In 2021, Meghan spoke about a "secret night out" with Prince Harry.

Secret Halloween

Meghan had reportedly said that she and Harry snuck out for a Halloween party in Toronto, Canada, and nobody knew it was them, because they were both wearing costumes. When speaking to DeGeneres, Meghan said they wanted to have one fun night on the town before it was out in the world that they were a couple.

"He came to see me in Toronto. And our friends, and his cousin, Eugenie, and now her husband, Jack, they came as well, and the four of us, snuck out in Halloween costumes, to just have one fun night on the town before it was out in the world that we were a couple," Meghan had said, as per the Express.

She explained how they were able to be so incognito. "It was a post-apocalypse party and we had all this very bizarre costuming on, and we were able to have this, one, final, night out," the Suits star said.

But despite the memories, Halloween still remains a special celebration for the couple, especially now they've welcomed children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.