The Week Ahead: South Jersey Leans All the Way Into Spooky Season

We have reached the best stretch of the South Jersey calendar, and I will not be taking questions. Halloween falls on a Saturday this year — October 31 — which means the week ahead, the run from Monday the 19th to Sunday the 25th, is the glorious deep breath before the whole region loses its mind in the best possible way. Porches are already crowded with mums and foam tombstones. The good houses on your block have started quietly escalating. This is the week to get out of your own living room and go enjoy what your neighbors have built.

Start at home

Let me start where I always start, because it’s home: Collingswood. The Farmers Market runs again this Saturday, the 24th, 8 a.m. to noon along the PATCO line between Collings and Irvin avenues, and late October is honestly its best self — apples, fresh cider, winter squash, the last stubborn peppers of the season. Go early, bring a tote, and let the morning take as long as it wants. Haddon Avenue around it is having the kind of fall that makes you forgive the parking. If you want to make a day of it, the borough’s stretch of BYOBs is right there, and a slow dinner after a cold day is a genuine pleasure of living here.

For the full-send haunted-house crowd, Six Flags Great Adventure’s Fright Fest is deep into its season up in Jackson, turning the park over to fog and chainsaws on select nights right through Nov. 1. It is loud, it is a lot, and if that’s your love language, this is your week. For a gentler scare — the kind you can bring a seven-year-old to — South Jersey’s ghost-tour and haunted-attraction circuit is in full swing; check the listings at SJ Magazine or your town’s rec department, because the smaller the operation, the more heart someone poured into it, and those are the ones I root for.

Root for the little guys

And here’s my soft spot, every single year: the little guys. The community theaters and the church-basement companies and the volunteer run haunted walks that nobody’s making a dime on. The Ritz in Haddon Township and the stages like it have been giving us a steady diet of fall programming, and Haddonfield has been leaning into its whole Halloween-town personality — the shop windows, the costumed strolls, the general agreement to be charming about it. None of that happens by accident. It happens because somebody on a volunteer board said “let’s do it again this year” and then actually did the work. When you show up, you’re not just buying a ticket. You’re telling that person it was worth it.

When you show up, you’re not just buying a ticket. You’re telling that person it was worth it.Jenna Joy

A programming note, because I’d rather be useful than breathless: exact dates and showtimes for this week’s one-off events shift year to year, so confirm with the venue or your borough’s calendar before you load the car. A week-ahead preview can point you toward the good stuff; it can’t promise the curtain goes up at 7 if the troupe moved it to 8. Call ahead. It’s the South Jersey thing to do anyway.

Looking ahead

Looking just past the window, for those of us who plan: the Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood has a strong concert fall still to come, with Kansas on the calendar for November 13, so if live music is more your speed than live scares, keep an eye on the White Horse Pike.

But that’s later. This week is about the countdown. Go to the market. Walk a Main Street that’s dressed up for the occasion. Find the community show that twelve people made in a borrowed space and give them a full house. The big night is a Saturday away. Spend the week getting into the spirit — and I mean that as literally as South Jersey will allow.

See you out there. I’ll be the one lingering too long at the cider stand.

Based on Gazette reporting and listings from the Collingswood Farmers Market, SJ Magazine, Scottish Rite Auditorium, and Six Flags Great Adventure. Confirm event dates and times with venues before attending.