By Shareen Strauss
The town of McCloud was a spooky place to be on Halloween
as it turned into a Haunted Village.
The McCloud Community Recreation Council, along with Quentin Zahara who hosted the Haunted Treasure Hunt and the free movie called Hocus Pocus shown at the Scout Hall at the park in town, held nothing back to bring the best spooky adventurest Halloween the McCloud children have ever seen.
Many volunteers worked throughout the day to make the Hoo Hoo Park gazebos into themed haunted dwellings of spectacular scariness. The gazebos were themed Witch's Coven with possessed dolls, built by Stephanie Burris who was the coordinator of the event. She used all her own dolls that she saves for this holiday.
Other gazebos, all cloaked in black, had themes of skeletons, an operating table, an insane asylum, and Hocus Pocus which was the theme of the movie that was shown afterward.
There was lots of community involvement as volunteers of witches, goblins, ghouls, ghosts, and mummies roamed about ready to scare children and hand out candy.
Stephanie Burris, says, "It takes a village to do a haunting. Around 30+ donations from community members helped make this wonderful event as successful as it was. I want to also thank Stephen Richardson with Art & Design for making up the flyers and the McCloud CSD park maintenance worker, Ron Howard, for maintaining the park and gazebos so well for our event. We have a great community."
Quentin Zahara who was dressed as Billy the Zombi, lined up the children for the treasure hunt followed by a costume contest, and then, after exhausting all the children from running around the park for the treasure hunt, showed the movie Hocus Pocus. The free pizza during the movie was donated by Siskiyou Brew Works.
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The winners of the treasure hunt were Jordan McCalister who found the skeleton in the 4th through 8th-grade hunt
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Payton Walsh from the preschool through the 3-grade group who found the Zombi's pet black spider
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Ani Proter found the Zombi's heart in the high school group, and Kaitlyn Jones from the adult search found the Zombi's eyeball
All winners of the hunt received age-appropriate candy. Most of the candy was donated by Zahara himself. "This Halloween was scary fun. I was excited to see the families who came to participate in the Spooky Spectacular. I have to thank the McCloud Rec Council for teaming up with me and helping make this event bigger than before. I am looking forward to future Halloween events for the families of this town."
Since 2020, Zahara has hosted 3 Halloween Treasure Hunts and 5 money treasure hunts. He was also just voted unanimously to be next season's McCloud Chamber of Commerce president.
From the president of the MCRC (Patty Ballard-Faulkner):
The McCloud Community Recreation Council would like to acknowledge and thank the following volunteers during the first "Fright Night" at Hoo Hoo Park.
We also want to Thank Quentin Zahara for allowing MCRC to join with his Treasure Hunt and Movie.
Steve Richardson for his donation of art work and flyers.
Shareen Strauss for volunteering to report and photos for an article with Siskiyou News.
Stephanie Burris had this vision of groups of community members decorating the gazebos and what a fun filled day and evening did it turn out to be.
The following people made this event amazing.
Tristan Burris
Kayden Burris
Kayla Burris
Kayrisa Burris
Sheri Burris
Dale Faulkner
Sandra Ballard
David Wolf Sr.
David Wolf Jr.
Beth Wood
Ryan Davis
Amber Davis
Gordon Shedd
Amber Savage
Austin Savage
Anne Jenkins
Rosemary Cary
Ryan Hoag
Micheal Taten
Tracie Ross
Mack the dog
Geeia Wildman
Shawn Birkhofer
Bob weider
Dan Fay and Lindy Drewry Fay
John Friday
