The main stage on East Washington Street is being set up for live music. Photo by Abby Hoehn.

HARRISON PRYOR | STAFF REPORTER | hrpryor@butler.edu

Every year for the past several decades, the community of Irvington — the neighborhood namesake of Butler’s Irvington House — has held a week-long festival celebrating all things spooky, with this year’s festivities taking place from Oct. 19-26. 

This year’s kick-off event was a wellness fair at the Irvington Presbyterian Church, which included free flu shots, HIV testing and the first of the festival’s two blood drives run by non-profit organization Versiti.

The first Saturday ended with the 21-and-up Halloween Ball at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, advertised as an “adult prom.” Local band Roughouse provided live music, and the dance’s main event was a reenactment of the famous pig blood scene from the 1976 horror film “Carrie.”

The next night, Our Lady of Lourdes Church hosted the Spooky Organ Concert, featuring local musicians Dominic Duray, Erik Scull, Daniel Narducci and father-and-son duo Tad and Heath Nelson. The concert focused on celebrating the classical “Songs of Dance and Death,” a collection of pieces composed by Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky in the 1870s.

Monday began with Versiti’s second festival blood drive — this time vampire-themed — at the Irvington Library. Most notably, Monday marked the return of the live art auction at the historical Benton House. The main draws to the silent auction were the three finalist pieces for the Irvington Halloween Poster Contest, which was won by local artist Davion Ellis.

Heartland Film partnered with the Irvington Halloween Festival Planning Committee to bring the community seven horror shorts on Tuesday at the Kan-Kan Cinema and Restaurant. Tuesday also featured a gathering of psychics and a series of séances at the Irvington Lodge.

First-year journalism major Miles Kong, who lives in the Irvington area, lamented that the festival and neighborhood don’t get as much love as they should.

“Irvington is a wonderful place,” Kong said. “There’s so much history in Irvington that people don’t even know about.”

Kong admitted that he could only make it to two events this year, one of which was Thursday’s Night Out in Sleepy Hollow at the Irving Circle Park, where local writers submitted spooky short stories to be read to the crowd.

Kong’s favorite part wasn’t the reading, though — it was the witches. After the stories were read, members of the Irvington Black Hats Society donned their famous witch costumes and performed choreographed dances to various Halloween songs on the streets surrounding the park.

Seeing as the event is named after the story and the community after the author, Thursday night ended with a reading of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving. The story features arguably the most famous Western rendition of the Headless Horseman, who appears in several posters advertising the festival.

The week of celebration began and ended by promoting health. Friday’s lone event was the Zombie Bike Ride, in which bicyclists dressed as the undead rode around residential Irvington, starting from the Irvington Library and ending at Irving Circle Park.

Saturday began with the morning Vampire Run, where participants were encouraged to wear the costumes they would later wear at the street festival. The run included 5k and one-mile options and a free Little Bat Dash for children.

The main event is always the actual street festival at the end of the week. East Washington Street is shut down from Arlington Avenue to Ritter Avenue at 4 a.m. to allow more than 120 vendors to set up their booths. After the Vampire Run, the true Irvington Halloween Festival begins. The streets fill with creative costumes and eager shoppers as over 80,000 people come to see the famous local celebration.

Katie Rousopoulos, Butler’s associate director of service and community engagement, highlighted the fun of people-watching for all the crazy costumes.

“If you’re into festive fun, weird traditions, people-watching or just experiencing some of Indianapolis’ culture, I’d encourage you to attend the festival,” Rousopolous said, “Or at minimum, go drive around Irvington’s streets and check out the house decorations at night.”

The costume contest held just before the parade was indeed a spectacle. The competition had three categories across four age groups — three for children and one for adults — and a group section for each category. A young boy dressed as the front half of the Titanic stole the show in the handmade category, and the scary category featured several witches and monsters. The pop culture category was the one in which participants had the most creative freedom. From Chappell Roan to Wolverine, few costumes in this category could be called similar.

The festival ended with the long-awaited parade, which showcased the winners of the costume contest, the Irvington Black Hats Society. The Irvington Preparatory Academy’s (IPA) marching band partnered with select members of the Irvington Community Middle School (ICMS) concert band to put on their first performance at the parade.

Rebecca Beyers, director of all bands across IPA and ICMS, and the students involved were thrilled to show everyone how far they had come with only two weeks of practice. 

Beyers proudly reported that their students have grown not only as musicians but as members of the larger Irvington community.

“During the last two nights of rehearsals, we prepared for the parade by marching down a local side street through the neighborhood,” Beyers said. “Cars pulled over to open windows and cheer us along, neighbors came to windows and outdoors to watch us.”

Jana Goebel, the Festival Planning Committee’s parade organizer and principal at IPA, joked about what was truly at the heart of Irvington’s strong sense of community.

“I don’t know a lot of neighborhoods that are as into Halloween as this neighborhood,” Goebel said. “But it’s something we take pride in.”