There's one festival in Indiana that celebrates Halloween for an entire week!

Get that PTO Ready and Plan Your Trip

Like many folks, I love the Halloween season. It's when the weather starts cooling down and we get a break from the humid midwestern summer heat, and it's when pumpkin patches, corn mazes, and haunted houses open for the season. In my opinion, it's the most wonderful time of the year! However, it's also one of the busiest times of year because there's so much going on, that it's hard to fit it all in. But there is one week in October, you'll definitely want to pencil in some PTO because there's a week-long Halloween celebration, that you won't want to miss!

Photo by Taylor Rooney on Unsplash

How Indiana Became Home to a Week-Long Halloween Celebration

Located in Indianapolis is Irvington which is a historic district of the city. Every year the Irvington Community Council hosts the Historic Irvington Halloween Festival. This year will be the 78th annual Historic Irvington Halloween Festival. According to their website, the event started on Halloween night, 1927 with a parade of costumed adults and children. The Halloween festival and parade had many ups and downs over the decades. Eventually, the festival stopped for a few years altogether. Then in 1970, the annual festival returned.

Witches, banshees, and little goblins would not return to Irvington until Saturday, October 31, 1970, when windows in the business district were once again filled with images of Halloween.

The full festival history is quite fascinating, you can find it here.

Photo by Geoffrey Moffett on Unsplash

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When is the Historic Irvington Halloween Festival in 2024?

The Historic Irvington Halloween Festival, this even attracts more than 80,000 people annually. This year, the festival will take place October 19th through the 26th with fun events scheduled for each day.

The big events set for each day are as follows:

October 19th- the Wellness Fair and the Halloween Ball
October 20th- Spooky Organ Concert
October 21st- Art Auction
October 22nd- Horror Shorts Movie Night
October 23rd- Family Movie Night
October 24th A Night Out in Sleepy Hollow
October 25th Zombie Bike Ride
October 26th- The Vampire Run, Street Fair, and Halloween Parade

You can see the full schedule, and more information on each event through the website, here.

LOOK: How Halloween has changed in the past 100 years

Stacker compiled a list of ways that Halloween has changed over the last 100 years, from how we celebrate it on the day to the costumes we wear trick-or-treating. We’ve included events, inventions, and trends that changed the ways that Halloween was celebrated over time. Many of these traditions were phased out over time. But just like fake blood in a carpet, every bit of Halloween’s history left an impression we can see traces of today.

Gallery Credit: Brit McGinnis