Exploring Everyday Philadelphia

Philadelphia offers many area pumpkin festivals with any number of attractions and other goodies just in time for the harvest and Halloween season.

The Harvest Festival at the Reading Terminal Market on Saturday, Oct. 18, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. is an annual event that celebrates the harvest season featuring fresh produce, a pumpkin market on Filbert Street, a pumpkin weight contest, hay rides, face painting, barbeque and other foods, sidewalk sales, and bluegrass musical entertainment.

The Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival heralds in its 38th year with pumpkin patches, weigh-off competitions, pumpkin sculptures, a parade, arts and crafts, harvest-inspired food. This free event occurs Sunday and Monday, Oct. 19 and 20, hours from 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

The Bucks County Pumpkin Fest at Fonthill Park presents a family-friendly Halloween event on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 25 and 26. Artists carve pumpkins for the enjoyment of the crowd, clowns and magicians entrance their audience, and there are hay rides, petting zoos, inflatable rides, and tons of festival foods.

Visit one, or stop by all three - either way you’re guaranteed an amazing time!

Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway is offering a family-friendly Halloween celebration which is guaranteed to be both entertaining and educational for kids (from 6-16 years old) and their parents (one adult per three children). From 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 25, to 9 a.m. Sunday, the academy welcomes you to stay overnight among the oddities, monsters, and mummies within the museum to learn about these fascinating creatures. There will also be a costume contest, trick-or-treating, pumpkin carving, and a live animal show of nocturnal creatures, perfect for the spirit of the season.

Check-in is from 6:30-7 p.m. on Oct. 25. Children get in for $35 (for members) or $40 (for non-members). Adults get in for $30 (for members) and $35 (for non-members). A deposit of $10 is due by Oct. 17, and the rest of the balance at the door. The fees cover food, and the next day’s admission. For more information or to register, call the museum number, 215-299-1060.

The HatOber Fest is a great way to celebrate the days leading up to Halloween.  Autumn is such a beautiful time of year, come enjoy it with the many others who know that fall is in the air from October 16-18 and October 23-25.

Come enjoy the sidewalk sales and craft show, perhaps even get a head start on your Christmas shopping!  Bring the kids to the spooktacular haunted house and ghost tours through the historic town of Hatboro.  Take a hay ride through a cemetery, have some spinning fun on the amusement rides and play a game or two.

On the final day of the festival, October 26^th, there will be a costume parade where the children can show off their costumes a little bit early for all to enjoy.  They may even win if they have the best costume!  There will also be pumpkin painting available, best pumpkin wins!

The HatOber Festival runs for two weekends in a row and there is so much to do, that you will want to attend both weekends!

Come see the Count and all of his friends at The Count’s Halloween Spooktacular at Sesame Place through October 27^th (weekends only) Kids are welcome to come in full costume and take a walk through Count’s castle and enjoy a hayride to the pumpkin patch.

Trick or treating will be held throughout the park and there will be many more activities, games and rides for the whole family to enjoy!

This family friendly event will also feature a stage show with the Count and his Sesame Street friends called “Countdown to Halloween”. The Sesame Street pals will sing and dance about pumpkins and bones while the audience enjoys the entertainment and has a blast.

Come visit with the friends at Sesame Place and watch your children’s favorite characters come to life!

Eastern State Penitentiary opened in 1829 with a standard of strict isolation to reform its inmates - a model that impacted prisons worldwide. In 1971, the prison was abandoned and became a state landmark.

Now, every October since 1991, Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary has offered the city’s most popular haunted attraction, Terror Behind the Walls. Featuring 11 acres of abandoned prison with gothic architecture and grisly history, Eastern State Penitentiary provides the perfect backdrop for Halloween thrills.

The attraction includes tours of the cells, 140 hired actors, acclaimed art installations, and a seriously scary reputation as one of the most haunted areas in the US. The Penitentiary was featured on the Travel Channel’s Most Haunted Live, Fox’s World’s Scariest Places, TLC’s American Ghost Hunters, and MTV’s FEAR. New in 2008, the Intake feature attraction is expanded to include a new layout, animatronic props, high-tech effects, digital sound, and large props from Transformers 2, filmed at Eastern State Penitentiary.

Terror Behind the Walls runs nightly throughout the month of October.

Autumn is here and that means that festivals abound!  Fall is the greatest time of the year for local farms to harvest their fruits and vegetables, come and find your favorites!

Celebrate and enjoy the foods that Pennsylvania harvests at the Reading Terminal Market Festival this October 13^th from 10am-4pm.  The Festival will be held on Filbert Street, which will be closed to all vehicle traffic.

Climb aboard the farm tractor and take a hay ride around the market in style.  Enjoy the hot apple cider, browse the award winning wines and cheeses and shop for fresh, local produce.

Grab a bratwurst or caramel apple and enjoy the east Tennessee band with a core of traditional and contemporary bluegrass, Special Delivery.

There is something for every one of all ages to enjoy and see!

Chilling shivers await you at the Halloween Ghost Tours in Philadelphia this year!  Take a candlelit walking tour of one of the most haunted cities in America.  The Halloween Ghost Tours of Philadelphia presents a 90 minute tour of the most haunted places in the city, including St. Peters Cemetery and Independence Hall.

The expert tour guides will tell you chilling tales of some of the founding fathers, such as Benjamin Franklin.  You will be looking over your shoulder at every stop and watching the shadows!

The tours are offered every night through October at 7:30pm and on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30pm and 9:30pm.  Halloween night tour times are 7:30pm and 9:30pm.

Tickets may be purchased online or at the Omni Hotel Gift Shop (401 Chestnut St., on Chestnut Street between 4th and 5th Streets), with cash only, until tour
time and at the Independence Visitor Center, 6th and Market Streets,
until 6:00 pm.

Happy haunted Hunting!

As the persona “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark,” Cassandra Peterson gained fame (and some might say, notoriety) by hosting Movie Macabre, a weekly horror movie presentation and lampoon. She is now a media icon in her trademark gothic black gown, black beehive wig, amazing cleavage, and valley-girl attitude. And this Halloween, Elvira will be touring the historic sites of Philadelphia.

The fun-filled evening will begin when Elvira does a reading of the famous poem The Raven at the Edgar Allen Poe House from 5:30-7 p.m. At 7:30 p.m., Elvira will join guests for a thrill at America’s most historic prison for the Eastern State Penitentiary’s popular haunted attraction, Terror Behind the Walls. Finally, Elvira will stop by the Haunted Halloween Bash at the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue. The Bash lasts from 9 p.m.-2 a.m., and Elvira will arrive around 10 p.m. It features drinks, food, a DJ, and an Elvira look-alike contest. General admission tickets to the Bash are $30.

Inside the house on Seventh Street in Philadelphia, Poe wrote some of the most quintessential prose and poetry that permanently influenced all American literature thereafter, including such works as “The Black Cat.” He lived from 1843-1844 in the house on Seventh Street with his wife, Virginia. He had rented several houses in the six years he lived in Philadelphia, the most productive years of his life, but the Seventh Street house is the only one that still stands. It acts as the bridge between the ages, taking visitors back two hundred years ago to the place that housed an American legend. On Halloween, from 5:30 to 7 p.m., Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, will host a reading of the famous poem The Raven.

As a sidenote, January 2009 marks Edgar Allen Poe’s bicentennial. The Edgar Allen Poe House intends to celebrate the occasion with a new exhibit installation that honors the impact Poe had on Philadelphia, America, and the world. The museum will be open through November with limited access to the public Wednesday-Saturday, 12-3:45 p.m. It will be temporarily closed in the month of December to prepare for the new installation.

On Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 25 and 26 from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., the Philadelphia Zoo invites guests to the Halloween attraction Boo at the Zoo, free with zoo admission. The zoo offers a giant costume and trick-or-treating party among the animals, with free candy stations throughout the zoo, storytelling, face-painting, games, and music. As a 2008 bonus, Dracula from the Pennsylvania Ballet Company and Peter Pan from the Walnut Street Theater will join in the fun. The zoo animals, too, receive a tasty Halloween treat - local farms donate pumpkins, apples, and fresh produce every weekend in October in the spirit of the harvest season.

For an extra $50, guests can stay overnight for the Spooky Snoring Safari, during which families camp out in an empty classroom and receive a tour of the zoo after dark to view the nocturnal animals in addition to ghost stories, arts and crafts, and other activities, this event completes the family-friendly Halloween festivities.

Adult zoo tickets are $17.95. Child tickets are $14.95. Children under two years old enter free. The Philadelphia Zoo is open daily from 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m.