Three nights of Halloween
The three nights of Halloween started with a Saturday Broom making event, willow harvested from Leverhulme Park turned into functioning real brooms with free hot chocolate, a nice event with 50 people attending during the day.
Then came our big Halloween Spooktacular, 140 hotdogs handed out, 150 hot chocolate, 140 wands given out that glowed in the dark once they had been put in the goblins mouth, Reece, Brad, Jenson, Carter, Jack, Riely taking turns in the dinosaur costumes and gorilla suits, Frankie and Jasmine guarding the Pirates chest from young pirates trying to plunder their chocolate coins, Adele the Halloween Witch handing out the haribo prizes and an assortment of Halloween goodies (that she kindly made herself), Becky who monitored the lads handing out the spooky word search and who did absoultey not scare the hell out of me by hiding behind a table at the end of the event, Angelica, Sam, Alexander and Stuart (great to have Stuart join us again) kindly helping to dish out the hot chocolate and hot dogs, Elliott dedicating the entire night to being the crypt keeper, Alexander hiding in the doll house greenhouse as a grim reaper, Simon and Jan doing a fantastic job on the karoke (wtih Simon roleplaying as a pirate with the kids which was lovely to see), Sue and Dave helping with hot water for the pump flasks, and finally myself as usual running around the site checking on everyone.
We had just over 300 people attend over the two hours, enjoying the vast amount of decorations, word search, free food, thrills and scares. Behind the scenes what the public didn't see is the kindness from volunteers, Sam donating extra halloween treats, Reece cooking biscuits for volunteers and donating extra trick n treats, Sam cooking cupcakes for volunteers (the cupcakes did get eaten Sam). A new approach was making the El Cielo shack into a day of the dead homage arranged and sorted by Angelica who also kindly made traditional sugar skulls, a few words from Angelica about Day of the Dead;
"To be provided"
Hectic was an understatement to describe the Halloween Spooktacular but something interesting came with our final Halloween night of Roasting Marshmallows and Hot chocolate.
The atmosphere was lovely, even though 200 people attended from 5:30pm till 7:15pm. It was relaxed, there was no jump scares so younger children got to enjoy the night without being scared, families got to chat to us, they used the stocks for family photos, they took photos of the decorations and had time to enjoy them, it was a completely different vibe to the chaos of the Halloween Spooktacular. Every year we learn something new, what we learned this year is that bigger is not better, getting people to attend is not the priority, creating an enjoyable (not crowded) site where families can take time to enjoy the decorations, time to chat to us as a community and getting to use props for pictures.
Moving forward our 2027 Halloween event will restrict the numbers for the Halloween Spooktacular to reduce the crowd sizes to time slots with booking required and the final hour being open to the wider public (subject to committee approval). Thank you to all the volunteers who gave their time to helping us host three nights of Halloween, without your kind support none of this would make memories for local children and if anybody out there would like to support us financially with a kind donation, we can assure you 100% goes towards the community events and activities, just email us at BoltonNEWT@gmail.com A total of 550 people benefiting from the three days is something I hope al the volunteers take away as something to be very proud about.
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