Imagine you’re walking through the forest and you see a haunted carnival. You go in, and clowns are popping out at you from every angle. WAIT! Those aren’t normal clowns–they’re all deranged. They start approaching you, and just before you’re about to scream–you remember you’re at Halloween in the Hollers at The Bonebrake Center. Halloween in the Hollers was an event held at the Bonebrake Center on Oct. 26 from 12-11:30 p.m. The event consisted of many vendors, festive carnival games, detailed face painting, a costume parade, a not-so-scary haunted house, and a very scary haunted trail. Halloween in the Hollers was also a fundraiser to help make needed repairs to the 200-year-old Bonebrake Center.
During the day, the Bonebrake property was filled with exciting things for children and families to do. Creepy carnival games, such as a ring toss with skeleton heads or mini-Halloween bowling, were scattered across the entire backyard of The Bonebrake Center. Kids had the opportunity to take a few pictures with Sally and the Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas, make smores with Winifred and Sarah Sanderson from Hocus Pocus, and hop in a photobooth with Chucky from Child’s Play. While children had a fun place to play in the backyard of the Bonebrake, adults had more activities set up in front of the house. Food and craft vendors lined the entire front yard of the house and completely packed the parking lot. There was a little bit of something for everyone who attended the event.
As darkness crept over Salem, the creepy characters started to come out of the shadows. Volunteers of all ages and groups came together to make the haunted trail the spookiest event in town. Salem High School Student Council members, National Honors Society members, elementary school children, and adults with a love for Halloween found a scary role along the trail–everyone with a passion for working towards a good cause made this fun event possible. While Salem High School FFA volunteers were mostly unseen, they played a big part in the trail as well. FFA helped ensure the scare actors and people walking the trail stayed safe. Tickets for the trail were ten dollars a piece with proceeds going towards repairs at the Bonebrake house. Once paying, guests could walk the trail as many times as they wished, with scare actors surprising them in different ways with each walk-through. A few areas on the trail were: Gruesome Doctor’s Office, Twisted Forest, Creepy Carnival, and Horror Movie Row.
Halloween at the Hollers was a fun event for everyone who attended (including the volunteers). Sherri Stanford and Janet Price were the women who put in all of the effort to bring the community together to have a new, exciting celebration in town. Volunteers were also a humungous part of making sure that something this cool could happen right in the heart of Salem. By far, the best part of the event was seeing people work together for a better cause in a fun way. It is truly eye-opening to see all of the volunteer opportunities that are just right next door for people of every age. It shows one that you can never be too young or too old to help make the community a better place. I encourage you to take a look around at all of the opportunities to help better our town, and who knows, it may even be scary good.
