Portland is pulling Halloween out of October and dropping it into the middle of summer, complete with haunts, costumes, drag performances and enough spooky atmosphere to make the calendar feel personally offended. Ghosts of Summer returns this weekend for two nights of creepy entertainment, local shopping and theatrical weirdness.
The festival runs Friday and Saturday at The Redd in Southeast Portland, where more than 30,000 square feet will be transformed for the occasion. Founded by Portland theater-makers Lilo Alfaro and Matthew Capurro, Ghosts of Summer was created as a local alternative to the increasingly corporate Halloween machine, as detailed in OregonLive’s report.
Thirty Thousand Square Feet Of Spooky Portland
This year’s theme is “Tombstones and Tomes,” promising crypts, mausoleums and dusty books with dark ambitions, according to the Ghosts of Summer website. The festival is scheduled for 6 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. both nights, with single-day tickets starting at $13 and a weekend pass listed at $23 by Travel Portland.
The event will bring together more than 70 artists, makers, fortune tellers and vendors, along with local food and drinks. A Raven’s Manor pop-up bar, a Scaregrounds PDX escape game, costume contests and other attractions are all part of the lineup, according to the festival’s press release.
Drag, Fire And A Crow Hunt
Entertainment will run across two stages, with programming that includes music, magic, sideshow acts, fire performances and drag. Quesa D’Mondays will host Ghosts of Drag, while the festival also plans costume contests, spooky classes, educational workshops and a mini haunted house, OregonLive reported.
The festival is also partnering with Wildwood: Follow the Crows, a Portland-wide art trail inspired by LAIKA’s upcoming stop-motion film. The free trail will feature nearly 6-foot-tall crow sculptures designed by local and regional artists, with proceeds from a later sculpture auction benefiting OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, according to Downtown Portland Clean & Safe.
Inside Ghosts of Summer, visitors can look for 13 of those crows as part of an interactive scavenger hunt and enter a weekend raffle. It is a very Portland combination: stop-motion fantasy, public art, haunted attractions and a little competitive bird spotting before the actual fall Halloween season even gets started.
October Has Been Demoted To Supporting Role
With local vendors, performers and artists making up the festival’s core, Ghosts of Summer is less a generic haunted house than a full weekend showcase for Portland’s eccentric creative scene. The result is a summer event that gives Halloween fans an early fix while sending attention — and ticket money — toward the people making the city’s strange side worth celebrating.
