Hi folks,

I just want to put in a plug for a very wonderful free event that starts next Friday in North Riverside, a near-western suburb of Chicago.

I was very lucky to have learned about it last year, and now I’d like to share the info with all you fellow lovers-of-Halloween.

Around Halloween-time of last year, Tim and I headed over to Dream Reapers, a very popular haunted house in Melrose Park, to see what all the billboard advertising for it was all about. It’s supposed to be a great haunted house, but we never actually got in.

When we arrived it was about an hour before the place closed. The line to get in literally stretched for blocks. We stayed in line for about twenty minutes. Dream Reapers had some people monstered up going up and down the line to keep the people waiting entertained. There was one creepy nerd who was picking his bloody nose, and who kept on getting close to people, wigging them out by attempting to wipe his bloody nose-pickin’ fingers on them.

As entertaining as the bloody nerd was, the line wasn’t moving much. We decided to give up. Tim had mentioned he wanted to stop by to look at a house near mine in Brookfield. It was a house with some nicely done decorations — a creepy, eerily-lit graveyard with skeletons and ghouls, some skeletons standing out front, some small smoke effects, etc.

We walked over there and were looking at the ghastly tableaux when the owner of the spooky house walked out. He was a really nice guy, and explained how he put some of the stuff together. He also mentioned that some people in North Riverside put on a similar kind of thing, except bigger — it stretched over two blocks.

So, what the hell! We headed over to North Riverside. It was really fantastic. Many of the houses on a two-block stretch of Forest Avenue had something spooky or disturbing in their front yard. There were a lot of things triggered with motion sensors, there was gushing blood, strobe lights, etc. It was inspiring, all the more because it was done by people out of sheer enthusiasm for the spooky and the creepy.

The opening day for this year’s festivities is next Friday, October 19th. I encourage you to visit, and leave a donation if you can.

Visit their website for more details: Freaky Frights