SALEM — The month of October was officially rung in on Thursday night with the popular Haunted Happenings Grand Parade, with this year’s theme of “Old School Halloween” looking back at the evolution of Halloween through the ages as Salem celebrates its 400+ anniversary.
Now in its 29th year, the annual parade through downtown Salem was one of the largest ever this year. More than 120 different groups and organizations participated on Thursday night, a significant increase over last year’s 85, with a total of around 3,000 people marching, according to Salem Chamber of Commerce executive director Jeff Swartz.
A variety of different floats celebrated different aspects of Salem’s history and the history of Halloween, such as a giant simulated cinema screen advertising classic “creature feature” movies, to floats pasted with cardboard cutouts of classic Halloween candies.
“With it being the Salem 400+ anniversary, we wanted to recognize the anniversary of Halloween as well,” Swartz said. “‘Old School Halloween’ allows people to celebrate from the old pagan traditions of Samhain, all the way up to the modern day with the ‘90s beloved Halloween movies like Hocus Pocus, Halloweentown, and others like that. We have dancing witches, more modern Halloween movies like Beetlejuice, a bunch of mythological creatures, and more. It’s a nice broad theme that allows people to participate, and we’re excited to see the creativity.”
The grand marshal leading this year’s parade was former Salemite and four-time Survivor contestant Aubry Bracco, who was most recently the winner of the popular reality TV show’s 50th season. Bracco lived in Salem from 2010 to 2012, and was editor of the online news publication The Salem Patch.
“It’s really wild to see how the city has grown over the past 15 years,” Bracco said. “I’m so honored to be here — I really love this city. It may have driven me a little wild at times when I was a reporter, but it’s so special to be back. It’s fun to see how things change, but also see the familiar faces I saw on Hawthorne Boulevard, hanging out on the porches.”
Bracco said that her experiences living among and reporting on the unique people and happenings in Salem prepared her well for her time managing alliances and winning challenges on Survivor.
“Salem was in my audition tapes for Survivor — I went undercover with the Salem Police in Halloween 2012,” Bracco said. “Salem is just full of characters and so many different personalities — you have the business community, the people who have been here forever, newcomers, and people just visiting. It really helped me navigate all different kinds of people.”
Staff with the Peabody Essex Museum participated in the parade with a float carrying a large haunted ship called “The Spirit of Salem”, celebrating the city’s maritime history with a spooky twist.
“We took our Heritage Day Parade Float and reimagined it by making it a bit spooky,” Jen Close, director of visitor engagement for the Peabody Essex Museum said. “For the Heritage Days Parade, it was full of our collections, and now we’ve filled it with spooky things like ghosts, skeletons, and mermaids.”
Elementary school students and educators from Horace Mann Laboratory School walked in the parade with a large float made by over 300 kids in grades Pre-K through five, with the help of art teacher Filis Warren.
“We’re celebrating old school Halloween with a float decorated with paper ghosts, witches, black cats, and other Halloween staples that all the kids worked on — it’s all them,” Warren said, who was wearing a cardboard gravestone with broken art supplies reading “here lies misused art supplies.”
Performers from History Alive also participated in the parade, wearing costumes from Salem’s colonial history and carrying a cornucopia filled with apples and lanterns.
“We made a little harvest and cornucopia to advertise our show ‘Kid’s Pub,’ a children’s show educating kids about colonial era games, songs, dances, and stories,” History Alive cast member Chloe Agyare said. “The float is based off of ‘Noah’s Dove,’ one of the stories that will be told in Kid’s Pub.”
With the Halloween season officially begun, the festivities will continue this weekend with the Haunted Biz Baz Street Fair, where thousands of visitors are expected to shop at over 80 vendors with handmade jewelry, art, apparel, crafts, Halloween decor, and more.
Michael McHugh can be contacted at mmchugh@northofboston.com or at 781-799-5202