Witching Hour is tonight, some monsters raising hell about the cost to attend

By Vin “Skull” Eek

Staff Spooks Writer

At midnight tonight, enchantresses from all over Transyl-vein-ia’s Witches Meadow will join other monsters at Spell Willows to celebrate the Witching Hour, a festival for summoning monsters, ghouls and goblins from their graves, and sending them from our dimension into the human dimension in preparation for Halloween.

Ticket prices for the popular event, according to festivalgoers, are getting scarier every year.

“I remember when admission used to be five bucks,” said Frankenstein’s Monster, a longtime attendee. “Now, on a middle-class scarer’s salary, I can’t even afford the parking. Prices to get in range from $190, which is for low-income attendees, to $1,200. What man-made creature these days can afford that? Only today’s younger, hipper sadistic psychopaths have the net worth to go.”

Even Greta Witch, one of the founders of the Witching Hour festival, is disgusted with the direction of the celebration, and not in a good way. She cut ties from the event in 1996 when the appointed board began raising prices. Greta stated that the Witching Hour used to be about the joys of being horrifying. Now, she said, the event is just horrifying because of the joys related to how much cash the Witching Hour can bring the board.

“It’s getting to the point where skeletons can’t even go,” Greta said. “The skeletons have really got nothing, not even a shirt on their backs. And the organizers keep cashing in on the rich. It’s not about the haunting anymore.”

According to the Devil, the current scareman of the board, the Witching Hour still is and always will be about quality ghosting and monstering.

“We still see this festival as a sanctuary for Transyl-vein-ia’s monsters and ghosts looking to be transported into the human world to scare people to their deaths on All Hallow’s Eve,” the Devil said. “These creatures complaining about what we, the board, have done to this sacred event think we’ve turned it into a top-down, top dollar controlled experience, and that’s just not true. We’re very free and experimental. We just demand that all monsters pay what the event is worth -- and it’s a lot -- or else.”

Greta said Devil sold his soul to the, well, Devil -- the “real one.” And there’s no going back.

“He’s a liar and a cheat?” she told Jack-o’-Lantern Press. “He’s not even a witch. Leave it to a man to try and take over what’s rightfully ours.”

Devil said the Witching Hour belongs to all Transyl-vein-ians, not just the witches.

Needless to say, Greta won’t be attending the event. Other witches said they felt she’s just bitter about the whole thing. Most will take part in the ritual tonight, which will continue on through the week. Monsters will then begin settling into the human world throughout the month and scarers will start terrorizing people as early as September and on through Halloween.

Portals will open around 11:30 p.m. tonight at Spell Willows. Witches of all types -- bad and even badder -- will be out with cauldrons casting spells, cooking black cats and vampire bats, and celebrating the beginning of the Halloween season.

Guests can expect live entertainment, live humans to eat and face painting for the little live ones just after the opening ceremonies at midnight and into the wee hours of the morning.

In addition to entry fees, monsters are free to donate additional funds anywhere on the premises. The board has made it extremely easy to find donation pits where you can drop off your hard-earned cash.

For more information, go to WitchingHourChaChing.mon.