The Scariest Thing in Blackwood This Weekend Is How Much Good It Does

BLACKWOOD — Somewhere on the grounds off Lakeland Road this weekend, a magician named Magic Ed is going to pull off a trick, and a six-year-old in a dinosaur costume is going to lose her entire mind with delight. That, more than any cobweb or carved pumpkin, is what the Camden County 4-H Haunted Walk is really about.

The walk runs Friday and Saturday, Oct. 16 and 17, from 7 to 10:30 p.m., out at 508 Lakeland Road on the grounds of the Camden County Office of Sustainability. For ten dollars a head you get a Halloween night done right: a DJ spinning spooky-season music, face painting, and a magic show at 8:30 each night courtesy of Magic Ed and his young apprentices from the Sam 4 Magic Club. Snacks and drinks are extra, the organizers say, so bring a few singles. Listings recommend it for school-age kids (anywhere from 5 and up to 8 and up, depending on the listing), and they offer the two pieces of advice every South Jersey parent already knows by heart in mid-October: dress warm, and wear shoes you can actually walk in.

Where the ten dollars goes

Here’s the part that most people strolling the path won’t stop to think about, and the part I can’t help but notice. This isn’t a haunted attraction somebody built to make a buck. It’s one of the biggest fundraisers of the year for Camden County 4-H, the youth program run through Rutgers Cooperative Extension that serves kids from kindergarten all the way up through grade 13. Every ten-dollar ticket, every bag of chips, goes back into the clubs and leadership programs that quietly turn shy kids into kids who can stand up and run a meeting.

I’ve come to believe you can measure a community by what its volunteers are willing to do with a free weekend in October. The folks behind this walk could be home with their feet up. Instead they’re out in the cold hanging lights and cueing up a magician so that the proceeds can send some ninth-grader to a 4-H leadership weekend she’ll remember for the rest of her life. There’s a magic trick in that too, if you look for it — grown-ups turning a couple of chilly nights into a kid’s whole future, and making it look like fun.

I’ve come to believe you can measure a community by what its volunteers are willing to do with a free weekend in October.Max Cedar

Tickets and details

Tickets are available online through Zeffy, or at the door with cash, Zelle or Venmo. For more information, the 4-H office can be reached at 856-216-7130, ext. 2 — ask for Sharon Kinsey — or visit camden.njaes.rutgers.edu/4h/.

So go get a little spooked this weekend. Let your kid meet the magician. Just know that the real sleight of hand is happening quietly in the background, where a county full of volunteers is turning your ten bucks into somebody’s confidence. That’s the kind of haunting South Jersey could use more of.

Based on reporting from 100.1 WJRZ and Camden County 4-H / Rutgers Cooperative Extension.