New Halloween group had a hauntingly good time in Swift Current
The members of the Swift Current Haunters are already counting down to the next Halloween after the spooky success of their inaugural year.
A group of Halloween enthusiasts came together to organize the Swift Current Haunters club for those who enjoy decorating their yards.
The intention of the group is to share ideas and advice, and they want to promote a safe and happy Halloween in the community.
Sandra Caron is a founding member and president of Swift Current Haunters. She felt their inaugural Halloween went really well.
“We're really happy with the way that things have gone and how people really responded to us,” she said.
They are still only a small group of six members, but they were able to organize the Festival of Frights decorating contest with 34 entries, which was a pleasant surprise for their initial year.
“We also had some other judges that came along with us when we went out and we judged over two nights,” she said. “We had a list of criteria that we had published ahead of time so that people knew what we were going to be looking for.”
Their intention was to look at various criteria during the judging process for the different contest entries.
“We didn't want it to be just whoever had the most stuff on their lawn,” she explained. “That wasn't the most important thing we were looking for. We were looking for balance and theme and light, and to make sure that it looked like something.”
The group was successful in securing a variety of prizes for the multiple award categories of the decorating contest.
“That's amazing to be able to give away those prizes in our first year,” she said. “The support that we got from our community is amazing. We didn't hear no from anyone when we talked to them. They were all very willing to step up and help us out.”
The City of Swift Current was one of the prize sponsors and the top three overall winners in the Festival of Fright decorating contest received a Light and Power utility credit. There were numerous other prize categories, including the people's choice award, random draw and instant prize winners, a Friday the 13th winner and a daily winner for the 13 Days of Halloween prizes.
“It was some work, but we really had a good time,” she said. “It was fun and we are definitely looking at next year and going to tweak it, and try to make it even better. Hopefully we'll have 50 entries next year.”
The contest judging took place in mid October and Swift Current Haunters created a tour list of addresses in the city with Halloween decorations for people to visit starting Oct. 17. This list included Festival of Fright contest participants and anyone else with a Halloween display that provided their address for the tour.
A total of 36 addresses were on the tour list for people to check out until Halloween. The list provided a convenient way for residents to find places with haunted displays.
“Our goal was to encourage people to go out and have a look at these displays,” she said.
Caron could not enter the contest, because she was a judge, but her address was on the tour list. She is an enthusiastic Halloween decorator and is continuing the tradition in memory of her husband, who passed away in 2020.
“He actually was decorating here before I met him and I've always really enjoyed Halloween too,” she said. “That was one of the things that we had in common that we built on.”
The house on Grey Street East at ACT Park has been decorated for at least 30 years and has therefore become known as the Halloween House. There were a record number of visitors on Halloween night.
“I don't know exactly how many people were there, but we gave out about 900 treats,” she said. “So we had at least or close to 900 kids and that's not counting moms and dads and just visitors who came to see the display. That was the record for this place. Last year there were 600 kids and I thought that was a lot, but they came in droves this year.”
The Swift Current Haunters will welcome more members, because an expanded membership will make it possible to do even more things.
“We have lots of ideas, but we need more people in our group to bring those things to fruition,” she said. “We'd like to do workshops on building tombstones and doing makeup and doing all kinds of things, pumpkin carving and lighting your displays. We'd love to be able to do all of those things. So we're hoping for more members.”
The group is planning to get together in the near future to talk about how things went during their inaugural Halloween contest and to begin planning for next year. Anyone interested in joining the club can contact them through one of their Facebook pages. Their main page is called Swift Current Haunters and their public discussion page is called Swift Current Haunters (Haunt Photos).