There has always been this driving force of creativity and spookiness that has unleashed itself on Halloween in New Paltz, almost like a DNA strain that is forever attached to the 12561 zip code. Yes, we’re known not only for our climbing, hiking, apple farms, sweet corn, historic streets, political protests, gay marriage rights, and numbers of bars per square feet but also our annual Halloween festivities.
Some participants, historically, have just skirted the law with egg-throwing and shaving-cream-bombing, pumpkin-smashing and other run-into-the-woods types of youthful revelry. There were the epic years of the Guenthers’ haunted house on Center Street, which brought in thousands of trick-or-treaters and took upwards of 100 volunteers to plan, construct and act out the live production of terror. When the haunt went out of the house, the New Paltz Youth Center took up the charge and created its own rendition of the Underworld, both to delight and frighten young Halloween enthusiasts.
For more than two decades there’s been the local parade, sponsored by the Lions Club, with the New Paltz High School marching band and large multigenerational crowds cascading down Main Street in costume, from princess to papier-mâché fantastical creatures. Add to these attractions The Bakery’s Night of 100 Pumpkins and Haunted Huguenot Street – and yes, the downtown after-hours bar scene – and there’s no question that New Paltz lived, breathed and sweated Halloween like Jack O’ Lantern fired up with propane.
Thus, one can only imagine the thought of Halloween being taken away from Paltzonians. It’s almost as sacrilegious as the Grinch stealing presents from Whoville. Despite the crowd restrictions and health protocols for limiting the spread of the Covid-19 virus, locals have found their own way to celebrate nonetheless.
Saturday was a Rockwellian October day: sunny, brisk, cloudless, with a full moon rising. Kids dressed up in a myriad of garb and ghoulish makeup were able to go trick-or-treating at various grab-and-go stations around the village, including one at the Youth Center, another outside the Elting Library, also the post office parking lot and Huguenot Street. The Bakery still held its pumpkin-carving contest and lent out the submissions to the various stations, and the Youth Center created large wooden paintings of local landscapes and spooky vignettes as backdrops for the kids to get their pictures taken.
If you didn’t know better, New Paltz looked a lot like a traditional Halloween from noon to 5 p.m. Once night fell, the lack of the parade and the typically crowded scene by The Bakery, with its pumpkin display, live music and hot mulled cider, was certainly uncanny. So was the absence of trick-or-treaters running down Village streets with wet leaves stuck to their boots, and parents nervously canvassing the streets for cars as their costumed children darted from house to house in search of candy.
But New Paltz residents should feel proud. They put their best webbed foot forward and found a way to do Halloween as best they could, given the public-health concerns. “We’ve given away 15,000 pieces of candy inside of 3000 trick-or-treat bags,” said Jim Tinger, longtime director of the New Paltz Youth Center. Tinger explained that he, along with several other community-minded people and local businesses, decided that they had to “do something” to give kids the ability to celebrate Halloween. “We came up with the ‘grab-and-go’ stations idea, and having candy and pumpkins and picture opportunities with the paintings, and then the Youth Center itself had an outdoor graveyard that they lighted up at 6 p.m.”
“It’s been great,” said Taylor O’Connor from the Youth Center, who was volunteering at the booth outside of the Elting Library. “We started out with 330 bags of candy and we’re down to a handful. The kids seemed so excited, and the parents were happy, and the costumes have been great.”
O’Connor and several volunteers from SUNY New Paltz’s Kappa Delta Phi fraternity, Brett Hanson, Thatcher Deyo and Ethan Merryfield, started rattling off the costumes they’d seen. “We’ve had Avatars, a lot of Harry Potter costumes and Elsa,” said Hanson. “There was also a Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a Covid-19 molecule!”
At the post office parking lot, Main Street Bistro owners Doug and Teresa Thompson, as well as Anne Marie and Kasey Keenan of McGillicuddy’s, helped man the station downtown, with kids hopping out of minivans hoping to get some of the last bags of candy. “The kids have been so happy just to be dressed up and outside and being able to go from station to station and get some candy,” said Thompson.
Around the corner from the Huguenot Street grab-and-go station, many of the neighbors put out folding tables decorated with leaves, gourds and pumpkins and left miniature paper bags full of candy, so that kids could continue trick-or-treating along the historic street. There were a bunch of self-serve operations, including some help-yourself treat tables outside Seth McKee’s and Amy Forestell Bartholomew’s houses on Duzine Road.
Others decided to make it a bit more creative and topical. Julia Fishman, Colleen Jones-Erazo and Evelyn Schneider were among those who constructed candy chutes for “the socially distanced sending-out of treats, individually wrapped and peanut-free,” as Schneider put it. Fishman said that her chute had many happy visitors who waited at the bottom like people waiting for that bank withdrawal to descend in its plastic container.
There were families who reimagined Halloween and went the at-home bonfire-and-games route, including Dana Maher. “We did a scavenger hunt for my four-year-old and our neighbor’s one-and-a-half-year-old. We made little cards with pictures and had them search around on our front lawn, where there were treat bags at every stop,” said Maher.
“We’re having our pod come over for a bonfire in the backyard,” said village resident Madeline Zacek O’Sullivan.
There are many things that can stop us all in our tracks every day, but in New Paltz, whether gathered around a firepit or ambling up and down Main Street in search of the last pre-bagged treat, the residents suited up, showed up, and did their Halloween. You can take the parade out of New Paltz, but you can’t take New Paltz out of its parade.
Join the family! 
