Halloweentown

by Jeff · October 21, 2018

We learned something new about our general area this weekend. St. Helens, Oregon has a “halloweentown” festival every October to celebrate it’s “paranormal” history. (Lot’s of pics at the end of the post).

St. Helens is located right on Highway 30 in Oregon along the Columbia river. It can be a little difficult to get to if you are travelling Interstate 5 in either direction as this area has no bridges across the Columbia, so you need to cross in Longview, Washington or Portland, Oregon. This quaint little town actually is a historic, beautiful place along the river with marinas and great views. The downtown core is made up of historic buildings, beautiful old houses and a great waterfront with a playground and beach on the riverfront.

The paranormal happenings began in 1981 when one of the police officers in town witnessed a strange unidentified flying object making strange noises, which he audio recorded. There was never any explanation of the sighting so it is still a mystery today. If you want to know about all sightings and investigations, check out the MUFON website.

St. Helens was also a movie setting for some scenes from “Twilight” and the Disney movie “Halloweentown”. This year they were visited by the witch and other actors from “Halloweentown” and two of the actors from the television series “Grimm”.

St. Helens’ old downtown transforms itself into a Halloween theme town and even closes he center of town down to vehicle traffic over the weekends so that revelers may walk about the area.

BFD with Flynn and Ollie

So E and I gathered up Flynn and Ollie and climbed into the Angry Bird and pointed our show south on I-5. Exit 16 takes you into the port of Longview, WA and we follow the signs to highway 30 and across the bridge into Oregon. The fall colors make this drive beautiful even through the weather hazed windshield.

south on highway 30

We arrived at the center of town at about 1 p.m. and were early enough to be able to find parking near the town square. The town also has paid ($10) parking set aside along the riverfront for the weekend crowds. We made our way to the town square park which they have transformed into a photo shoot area with different props.

welcome to St. Helens

In front of the City Hall they had a street performance by Leapin’ Louie Lichtenstein, a juggler, rope trick artist, unicyclist and all around fun entertainer. Louie is also an actor and his banter and interaction with the kids in the crowd was pretty cool.

Leapin’ Louie

Flynn and Ollie join the act

We took the opportunity with lower crowd levels to get some photo’s done for the Flynn and Ollie feed and then made our way to the food trucks. The food truck area had a little bit of everything for every taste. There was a mobile coffee truck, pita breads, bakery items, burgers and even vegetarian fare to be had.

A ride to where?

With our hunger sated, we went back on the track of the town spots of interest. There is a map available of the spots where filming of the movies took place and we wandered around the town taking in the sights and the costumes. There are some really great looking older houses and store fronts to interest the film fans and the general public alike. We took the tractor and wagon ride out to the “alien landing experience” where they had a “crash site” (think Roswell incident styling) and we were ushered into a conex container where they shut the doors and showed a 12 minute long film compilation of “ufo” information across the audio track of the 1981 recordings. This little trip runs about 25 minutes round trip and you get some good views of the river and the town from the riverbank.

Back in town, we met up with some friends who had just arrived in costume for the day and were staying for when the haunted house started it’s live actor phase. E and I decided not to stay for the haunted house as we had another destination this evening.

We had a blast visiting this festival! It lasts for the entire month of October and really injects some life and money into this sleepy little town along the Columbia river.

Cost breakdown to enjoy this visit: The town itself is free and there is a lot to be seen whether you are chasing the film trail or not.