On the heels of an ominously early nor’easter, sub-50-degree winds blew into New Paltz for Halloween, trying finally to denude the trees for that extra creepy look of bare branches. It was much cooler than last year’s celebration, but even those dressed in skimpy outfits seemed unwilling to cede the day. The last time Halloween was on a weekend was in 2020, and that year the fears over a pandemic outweighed the horrors of a cultural holiday—despite happening under the bright light of a full moon. The urge to return to a full night of costumed characters and questionable dietary choices has been building ever since, and exploded into a climactic community collaboration such as not been seen in far too long.
It built up over days and weeks, with haunted tours on Huguenot Street and numerous themed events at Elting Memorial Library paving the way. Thursday night, despite a day of hard rain scuttling some of the outdoor attractions, the haunted attraction at the New Paltz Youth Program was opened for business. With a theme of “nightmare in Oz,” it featured all the energy of middle- and high-schoolers aiming to disturb and dismay. Halloween night was dry enough to open up the full scene, and patrons were waiting up to an hour to find out the chilling truth about what happens to those who visit that magical land. From the tattered remains of a hot-air balloon caught in a tree that may have once eaten Charlie Brown’s kites to the jerky movements and eerie singing of the munchkins themselves, the experience felt well worth the five-dollar donation requested.
Ravi, Kavir and Theo were three of those who entered into that dark domain. All seemed to be of an age that they could have been the children that were caged and conscripted within those halls of dread, but chose instead to regard it with the dispassionate eye of a connoisseur. “The acting was amazing,” said Ravi, who ranked it as not the absolute best haunted house production put on at 220 Main Street, but certainly in the top three.
A time when adults and children walk arm in arm and treat each other like peers, much of Halloween is focused on giving the young the childhood they deserve. That was part of the reason Glenn LaPolt started the Monster Sprint, to raise money for the youth program. It’s not just monstrous as to costuming; it’s a monster of a sprint at a mile in length.
Huguenot Street remained a hub of activity, with trick-or-treating stations set up throughout the historic neighborhood. The old road is permanently blocked off from North Front to Broadhead, but might as well have been a pedestrian thoroughfare all the way to Mulberry Street, based on the afternoon traffic. Here, the smallest costumed characters pumped their sugar-fueled legs from point to point, with occasional cries of “I’ll get candy!” heralding the Halloween horrors parents might be managing well into the night. Volunteers who’d been doing this for several years generally got a sense that Halloween 2025 was shaping up as a big one.
After a different kind of disaster — burst pipes that left it shuttered for months — The Bakery was reopened in time for the Night of 100 Pumpkins. Passersby were enticed within by a skeleton continuously vomiting green liquid into a barrel marked “biohazard,” which may have been commentary on living in a college town, but it’s impossible to say. The carved-gourd competition is one of the oldest local Halloween institutions, and this year’s entries did not disappoint.
The oldest Halloween tradition here, the one that weaves all of New Paltz in its spidery web, is the parade itself. Curiously, its origins are less well known than that of the New Paltz Regatta. They both emerged in the 1950s, and given the amount of alcohol the college students who started the regatta consumed in those days, it’s remarkable that they remember as much as they do. Of the Halloween parade, it’s known that a local teacher was looking to give kids something fun to do that didn’t involve destroying property. If any of the tykes who marched some 75 years ago want that history recorded rather than take those secrets to their graves, this reporter is waiting for their call.
Carmine Fuoco, like just about anyone who grew up in New Paltz and stuck around, loves Halloween without question. Now the lieutenant of the town’s police department, Fuoco also holds a different perspective: “As police, it’s a nightmare.” Fuoco was tasked with coordinating the police presence in the community, which was largely about shutting off traffic on two state highways to make the parade possible. All local officers are on hand, along with state troopers and sheriff’s deputies — one of whom thoughtfully left a human skeleton in the passenger seat when leaving to corral drivers. More than 20 officers were there, yet three village public works employees still needed to be called in to help block off side streets with their trucks.
Last year, the first that the parade was routed from the middle school to Huguenot Street rather than the firehouse on Plattekill Avenue, had at least one hiccup; drivers were stopped at North Front for the parade and had nowhere to go. This time around, Fuoco got the car flow stopped up at Henry Dubois and routed it around town for a much smoother experience.
Official counts of parade attendance are not performed, and might be difficult given the tendency of spectators to join in at any moment. What can be said is that Main Street, closed to traffic for the sprint at 5:45 p.m. and the traditional 6 p.m. parade kickoff, wasn’t reopened until an hour later. The mass of marchers did, as tradition dictates, include political horrors among the ghastly callbacks to horror movies and folklore. These included a dead Jeffrey Epstein quietly following pal Donald Trump through the streets, and a ghost carrying a sign that proclaimed, “I listened to RFK Jr.” A number of others were dressed in outfits from the Handmaid’s Tale.
Those passing by the Roost art gallery were invited by a human-sized instant camera to have polaroid pictures of them in costume taken, as keepsakes for the vibe that brings New Paltz together in a way that neither the Munsee Esopus, nor the Huguenots who colonized their traditional lands, could possibly have  imagined.
Join the family! 
