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The time has come for a special Halloween treat: Ormon Grimsby’s NBC17 Halloween Special.

Tune in or set the DVR for 6:30 a.m. on Halloween or at 9:30 a.m. Sunday or following the 11 p.m. news Sunday night to watch as Raleigh’s only horror host offers a little fright and a lot of fun.

Stay tuned here for the video of the show coming soon.

The free event features inflatable bounce activities, pony rides, carnival-style games, food, live music and of course, lots of candy. The festival has been a church tradition since 1997 with an estimated 4,000 people attending last year.

“Fall Festival is a time for area families to enjoy a safe, positive alternative to trick-or-treating and other Halloween activities, while providing children with a fun and memorable evening,” said Calvary Chapel Senior Pastor Rodney Finch, who will share a brief message during the event. “Our church is blessed to host this annual outreach event and serve the many families living in the Apex/Cary area.”

The church is located at 1600 Center Street in Apex near the U.S. 1 interchange with Ten-Ten Road. Parking is available at the church and along Investment Boulevard. Children do not need to wear costumes to attend; scary costumes are highly discouraged.

They’d planned a Halloween wedding in legendary Sleepy Hollow, New York home to the “Headless Horseman.”
 
Walking down the aisle in a centuries-old church amid the ghostly legends of Sleepy Hollow.

That’s how engaged couple Lisa Penensky and Jim Nieves of Elmsford, New York, pictured their Halloween wedding.

They booked the Old Dutch church next to the Old Dutch graveyard 13 months in advance.

Now the pastor has canceled the wedding in a dispute over music.

“Those were the theme songs to the Addams family and the theme song to the Munsters,” said Pastor Jeff Gargano. 

“He was offended apparently by the Munsters and the Addams Family which we find kind of ironic being where we’re standing right now,” said groom Jim Nieves. 

But the reverend Gargano, the new pastor in the nearly 325-year-old church, says he wasn’t expecting a Halloween-themed wedding.

Both the bride and groom were going to wear black.

Costumes were optional for the guests.

The pastor felt the Munsters and Addams Family were inappropriate for a church wedding.

“Not all secular music would be inappropriate in a wedding. Some can be done. But we felt those two particular pieces – kind of ditties- were disrespectful,” said Gargano.

“I don’t know what his personal point of view is and where he draws the line of respect. This seems to be a personal issue with him,” Nieves said.

The pastor said he tried to be cooperative, offer the couple other options, even told them he would marry them in the church graveyard.

“There’s nothing in the contract stating that we are not allowed to listen to a certain music, there’s nothing in the contract stating that we have to dress a certain way as if there was any sort of dress code. I think there was just a failure of communication on their part,” said Nieves.

“I think quite frankly, two different sets of assumptions,” Gargano said.

Jim says he and Lisa will still get married on Halloween, at their home.

Families are invited to enjoy trick-or-treat a little early with many decorated vehicles and tons of candy!  The Fayetteville Police Department will be on site for the fun with a decorated mobile unit for children to visit.  After the little superheroes, princesses, transformers and more are finished collecting candy, the Operation Ceasefire Movie will begin at dusk!

The Operation Ceasefire movie being shown is Monsters -vs- Aliens, rated PG-13.  Fun-Go and Friends will be on hand to welcome all the boys and ghouls!  This is a free event, open to the public.

For more information about this event, please visit www.goswampdogs.com or call 426-5900.

Wrapped up with these fantastical imaginings are, of course, visions of bags filled to the brim with every kind of candy one could want. And, what adult does not remember the child’s thrill of choosing carefully what one wanted to transform into for the big day?

Along with the fun, there has also always been a backdrop of fright associated with Halloween.

Tales of razor blades in apples, poison in candy and abductions from the dark streets are common around the haunted night of Oct. 31. True or not, these tales do reveal the fear that comes from letting one’s child loose on the night. Many parents respond by accompanying their child, finding a safe location in which he or she can trick- or-treat or sending him or her off with a pack of friends – all reasonable strategies.

Halloween is lurking just around the corner; in two days it will be time for costumed youngsters to go forth into the night in search of candied spoils on which they may snack for days to come.

We encourage parents to be involved in your child’s Halloween exploits. Make it a family affair. And we encourage everybody, with or without children, to remember that this is a night set aside for them – be careful when driving the streets and remember that innocents are on the streets dressed as monsters. Be cautious.

Ensure that this Saturday is a pleasant day for them all.

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Ringo, our (will be one year old on Nov 1) golden retriever, in his pumpkin costume. He was not the easiest to photograph.  He stole our decorative corn off of the front porch and did what I’ve read to be known as “puppy frappes” in the front yard.  You know, when they just run around in circles with no apparent goal.

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A. Trunk-or-treating is a sort of Halloween tailgating in which people gather in a school or church parking lot to hand out treats from the backs of their vehicles. 

A 2006 story in the New York Times about the growing popularity of trunk-or-treat quoted 6-year-old expert Keifer Convertino: “You go trick-or-treating when you go to people’s houses to get candy. You go trunk-or-treating when you go to people’s cars to get candy, and that’s much better because you can go around the cars a million dozen times and you don’t even get tired.”
Many parents and churches embrace trunk-or-treating as a safer alternative to going door-to-door.

Q. Where did the tradition of going door to door for candy on Halloween originate? – J.T.

A. The ancient Celts in Ireland believed that the souls of the dead walked freely on Oct. 31.  But the souls weren’t trick or treating. The tradition of asking for treats dates back to the “All Souls’ Day” parades in England, during which the poor would beg for food. Families would hand out pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. Historians date this practice to the eighth and ninth centuries. Other cultures have similar rituals linking food to the dead, but the English tradition is probably the one with the most direct line to the modern custom of trick-or-treating in the United States, as English settlers brought the custom to the New World.

What’s the point of having Halloween anymore? Seriously.

Is the point to scare each other with costumes? If so, we’re failing miserably. When vampires become the new sex symbols, the idea of walking around with fangs and a cape becomes a tad dated. From a costume standpoint, it seems the goal is to give women the latitude to wear skimpy outfits in public that they would march in protest over every other day of the year.

Is the holiday’s point to gather as much candy as possible? If so, we’re again pulling an F on the culinary scorecard.

It wasn’t always so.

It used to be that a candy trip through the neighborhood was like collecting bars of gold from a chocolate Fort Knox. Giant planks of Hershey chocolate were commonplace. Massive Milky Ways were a reason to get out of bed that morning. The Nestle Crunch bars were so big, it sounded like bones breaking in your head when you gnawed on one.

Then came the great miniaturization of the 1970s. Only the candy makers didn’t call it that. They disguised their portion skimpiness by using the worst two-word combination ever created: Fun Size. What exactly is fun about a candy bar the size of a postage stamp? Size matters, especially when it comes to candy.

It isn’t that we’ve lost our interest in candy. I read last week that the top search terms for Halloween candy on Yahoo! in the past month are, in order: 1) Candy corn 2) Candy apples 3) m&m’s 4) Butterfingers 5) Mars candy.

I’m sorry, but those are lame.

To me, Halloween without some element of danger is a waste of time. (Minus the razor blade in the apple, of course.)

Tired of cute, peanut butter pumpkins and dainty, ghost-shaped Peeps, I went in search of candy even Freddy Krueger could love.

My favorites:

Monster Gummy Tentacle ($2.50, Walgreens). Now we’re talking! You eat a foot-long invertebrate appendage, you’ve made a statement. Oddly, the gummy tentacle is raspberry flavored. I never considered that a giant tentacle would have a fruity aftertaste. Go figure. If that’s not your speed, they also sell a Monster Gummy Earthworm, which is, again oddly, watermelon flavored.

Liquid Cherry Candy Blood Bag ($1.50, Walgreens). This sticky pretend IV bag is such a colossally bad message to send — “Hey kids, blood is candy!” — but it does meet the gore quotient. That it was made in China soothes no nerves whatsoever. Why not just give out samples of Mainway’s Bag O’ Glass?

Blood Balls Bubble Gum (25 cents, CVS). Again with the blood. I think I speak for all men when I say that the very name of this product makes us alternately giggle and cringe. The “mega sour mouth coloring gumball” might take the visual blood metaphor a bit too far. Then again, I could be wrong.

Skeleton Pops ($1, Dollar Store). Sold in a coffin-shaped bag, the skeleton’s body is the stick for the red lollipop head. Extra points are earned for the ultimate decapitation that occurs when the lollipop endures the Saliva O’ Death treatment.

Grave Grabbers Gummy Candy ($1, Walgreens). Pound for pound, it’s hard to beat gummy candy for elastic grossness. This hand-shaped candy packaged in a gravestone features decomposing tendons and gray skin with yellow fingernails. You might not want to eat it, but I guarantee with 100 percent certainty that it will achieve the exact reaction you want if you leave it in someone’s bed after they go trick-or-treating. But you didn’t hear that from me.