Spooky events coming to Middletown, Hamilton

Spooky events are coming to Middletown and Hamilton in the next week, including haunting concerts in a downtown Middletown church and an encore presentation of a paraforensics investigation into whether Hamilton's Third Street power plant is indeed haunted.

Mary Ellen Clinard will perform several free, 20-minute “Creepy Candelabra Organ Concerts” on Saturday, Oct. 29, at First United Methodist Church, 120 S. Broad St., Middletown.

The mini-concerts will include creepy music, including J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and excerpts from “Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Haunted Mansion,” “Phantom of the Opera,” and others.

“You don’t get an opportunity to play a lot of that stuff in church, so I thought, ‘Let’s blow it out, and have some fun,’” Clinard said. At least one earlier Halloween season, the church has had a full-length concert with singalongs of songs from “The Munsters,” “The Addams Family,” and “Monster Mash.”

“With this, we wanted to help Downtown Middletown Inc. because there’s so much going on that day, if you want to be able to just drop by for 20 minutes, here’s some scary organ music, and then they can go do Trunk or Treat and other activities.”

Concert performances will be on the hour from 3 to 8 p.m. that day. Other parts of the Hocus Pocus Halloween Family Fun Festival (also 3 to 8 p.m.) will be a free screening of the movie “Hocus Pocus,” a Creepy Car Show, Trick or Treating at local businesses, and craft making.

Afterward, the Hocus Pocus Halloween Dance — where costumes are mandatory — will run from 8 p.m. to midnight at the Windamere event center, 2 S. Main St. Cost of the dance, which is for people 21 and older only, is $25 per person.

Meanwhile, in Hamilton, two presentations by Creepy Cincinnati Paraforensics about possible power-plant hauntings were so popular the organization will offer another, at the same location. Because of the standing-room-only performance, the encore free performance was scheduled. It will happen 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, at the Lane Public Library, 300 N. Third St.

“For a number of years, staff and contractors have reported unexplained ‘visitors’ and other strange occurrences at the City of Hamilton Third Street Power Plant,” the city said in a news release. “Creepy Cincinnati Paraforensics volunteers will share the results of two recently completed investigations at the facility during special ‘Haunting of the Hamilton Power Plant’ presentations.

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