It all started on the night of Oct. 31, 1927 — and now the Historic Irvington Halloween Festival is celebrating its 79th year. Only being interrupted by the Great Depression, World War II, and COVID, it’s one of the oldest and longest-running Halloween festivals in the nation. In 2022, Country Living even named it one of the 30 best Halloween festivals in the country.
Most people think of the Irvington Halloween Festival for its street fair and parade on the final Saturday, but the festival has expanded over the years to be a week-long affair that hosts tens of thousands of families, with the 2025 edition running from Oct. 18 to Oct. 25. To put it into perspective, the only thing in Indy larger than this Halloween festival is the Indianapolis 500.
The original festival in 1972 featured a parade led by the Indianapolis Military Band, a street dance, and costume contests. Today, it includes a wide variety of events such as ghost tours, a Halloween ball, movie nights, costume contests, and a zombie bike ride.
“There are other neighborhoods in the city that do special things, but I don’t think their tradition runs as deep as ours does,” said Irvington Halloween Festival Director Carrie Yazell. “I think that is extremely special for Irvington as a whole and especially for Halloween [...] and we still have some of the same activities they had 79 years ago — through the test of time.”
Why Irvington? The east side neighborhood is named after Washington Irving, author of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and is believed to have influenced the community's strong Halloween tradition.
Indy’s unofficial “Halloweentown” also has a bit of a haunting history.
“Irvington is a community that has historically run out of town bad actors of U.S. history,” said Irvington Halloween Festival Media Lead Kelby Dolan.
One of them being one of the nation’s first-known serial killers, H.H. Holmes, who fled to Irvington after escaping Chicago police.
Another Irvington legend is the tale of Madge Oberholtzer, who is honored in a mural on East Washington Street. In 1925, the 29-year-old Irvington woman lived through a night of horror with D.C. Stephenson, the “Grand Dragon” of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan. She lived long enough after that night to share her story, which eventually dethroned Stephenson from Indiana political office and ended the second-coming of the Klan’s presence.
“Irvington was founded by abolitionists,” said Dolan. “We have a strong history of not segregating our community [...] things that weren’t happening in an early part of our country.”
Photo provided by Irvington Halloween Festival
If you want to hear more neighborhood spooky stories, make sure to check out “A Night Out in Sleepy Hollow” during next year’s festival run.
“The most electric time for me personally is like 4 o’clock in the morning on street fair day where we shut down Washington Street and you’re just standing there — I always call it the calm before the storm — and you can just feel the energy and the neighborhood starting to grow and it’s just the coolest feeling ever,” said Yazell.
For such a large festival, you may be surprised to learn that no one is getting paid for their work with the festival. It’s all volunteer run, but that speaks to Irvington’s community. It’s completely community driven.
Photo provided by Irvington Halloween Festival
“It’s for a love of wanting to change a neighborhood for the better,” said Dolan.
Next year, the Halloween festival will be celebrating its 80th year — where the street fair and parade will coincidentally fall on Halloween day.
No spoiler alerts, but there will be some extra special surprises to celebrate the festival’s 80th year.
“The neighborhood is gonna be crazy because you know, the kids can stay and trick-or-treat in Irvington [after the festival],” said Yazell.