Big chicken at Bowmanville's Fright Night

Halloween, you either love it or hate it. I know people who hate it. They're not very fun. Last night I met a lot of fun people who share my affection for spooky stuff at the Firehouse Youth Centre's fourth annual Fright Night in Bowmanville.

Paul Dobbs and a crew of volunteers put together this much anticipated event that had people lined right up Church Street in the rain. I got there with my kids Rebekah and Tavish and my daughter's friend Hannah and we waited for two hours to get in. But the wait was worth it.

We were told that at any time we could yell the safe word "chicken" and all the creatures would cease their scary antics. I thought my son would be the first one to scream and shout the safe word when we started our tour of the two floors of the Firehouse Youth Centre. It had been transformed into 13 scary Halloween scenes including Screecher, Hannibal's Lecture, The Mummy, and That's Gross to name a few.

This creature of the night came
out to frighten everyone in line.
Rebekah thought he looked 'chik'.
 Her words, not mine.

But I was the one who uttered the first panicked 'ahhhhhh' as a severed hand reached out and grabbed my leg in the dark. That said, I remained tough and refused to shout "chicken". It wasn't easy though!

Each tour was supposed to take 18 minutes but when you're constantly being chased through the dark by creatures that should be dead and buried you tend to hustle. I'm sure we we made it through Fright Night in under 18 minutes.

The event was a lot of fun and I'm sure it was an immense amount of work by all the volunteers who put it together. The fact it was a fundraiser for the United Way was the least frightening part of the whole evening.

With a week to go before Halloween, Fright Night was a good primer for the main event. I can't wait for next Sunday.