Diane and Chris Smarz, “The Miserables,” deployed a fog machine for their graveyard.
On Halloween night, smoke appeared to rise from tombstones in an unauthorized graveyard on Townsend Avenue near the Pardee Seawall as kids and their parents walked by.
Dim lights flickered from skeletons of rats and other unsavory creatures lurking by the markers. Extant but obviously ancient markers indicated a hag was killed by karma and an unfortunate soul named Bob met his end through an encounter with coyotes.
That was creepy scene Monday night as the 50th (or the 49th or 47th; nobody could exactly remember) annual parade of ninjas, skeletons, princesses, cats, sci fi figures of several generations — 500 folks strong— took part in the annual East Shore Halloween parade.
Townsend Avenue was closed from Parker Street at the seawall to Light House Point Road as the parade, in contingents of kids from the little ones to sixth-graders, kicked off at 6 p.m.
The mayor, police brass, and East Shore Alders Al Paolillo and Sal DeCola led the throng to the strains of Bobby Boris Pickett’s “Monster Mash,” down towards the viewing stand at Durso’s gas station.
There organizers like local attorney John Cirello presided over ribbons and other awards for coolest costumes or the most inventive Cleopatra or the scariest mummy. Among the fourth graders the Raven, aka as Lia Malone, and the Box of Orange Tic Tacs, aka as Dylan Treusch, wore the laurels over the crests, horns, helmets, beaks, wands, and tridents.
The adults were every bit as inventive as the kids. They included the Mask, aka as New Havener Felix Roman, whose gangrene complexion was handsomely set off over a yellow zoot suit.
At the end of the parade, the kids and their adult escorts were unleashed to trick-or-treat on Parker, Florence, Concord and the warren of small streets around the sea wall neighborhood. Properties blazed with inventive displays, lights, full size cats, inflated ghosts as tall as a small silo, horse skeletons, and on Shoreham Street, an orange-lit Christmas tree making its early statement.
Parade leaders step out.
Parents who remembered parading 40 years ago mixed with families new to the East Shore.
One of those middle-aged former kid paraders, Sandra Ventura, marched with her daughter and her son, who wore a furry brown sloth outfit (“It reflects my spirit,” he said mordantly).
Ventura recalled that the route was the same decades ago, as was the high community spirit. “It’s all treats here, no tricks,” she said.
The winning raven and Tic-Tac box.
East Shore neighbors welcomed the trick-or-treaters.
So many porches and front yards were elaborately got up — like the Smarzes’ faux cemetery, attracting wave after wave of kids — that there was a kind of competition at play to see who could give away the most candy.
“‘I ran out at 7:15,” DeCola said. “It’s an honor to say how fast you ran out.”
A horse skeleton greeted kids near Parker and Townsend.