The Monte Vista Hotel, in collaboration with a local restaurant, held a fall festival in Black Mountain, North Carolina, on Oct. 26, 2024. Credit – Courtesy Kelley Floyd
Krista Gamble and her family love Halloween. But this year, as her community in Asheville, North Carolina, was still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene—a category 4 storm that ravaged the city last month—she wanted to make sure that families in the area would be able to enjoy the holiday.
“It’s traumatizing a lot of the things some of these kids have seen or learned,” Gamble says about Helene. “It’s important to let these kids still be kids; they’ve had a tough month.”
Helene reached Florida on Sept. 26 and tore through the Southeast. The storm devastated western North Carolina—almost half of deaths due to Helene were in North Carolina, and 42 were in Buncombe County where Asheville is located, according to The Associated Press. Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane, wreaking havoc on communities that had just begun to recover from Helene. Officials are still calculating the damage from the two storms, but it’s estimated to cost tens of billions of dollars.
Gamble says she and her family were fortunate that they only had minimal flooding in their basement, but they were left without power and running water for a couple weeks after Helene hit. Gamble says much of Asheville is still under a boil water notice ash or Tuesday. But as the community has embarked on rebuilding and cleanup efforts, people like Gamble have also been coming together to help each other find moments of levity—like by celebrating Halloween.
North Carolina celebrates Halloween despite Helene
After Helene, Gamble started collecting donations of Halloween costumes and ended up bringing about 150 of them to a local community space in Asheville, which hero a free fall festival on Oct. 27 that included face painting, candy, and a costume drive. Gamble was one of several people who organized costume donations or Halloween events for kids and families.
Nearby, the Monte Vista Hotel and a local restaurant, Goldfinch, hosted its first-ever fall festival on Oct. 26, which included a Trunk or Treat, hayride, and even therapy horses, among other activities. There were also about 400 costume donations for people to choose from. Everything offered at the event was donated from in and out-of-state. The hotel, located in Black Mountain, had been providing free meals to people in the days after Helene hit, and has been housing people whose properties were damaged in the storm and qualify as survivors with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA has been providing assistance and coordinating relief efforts to states—like North Carolina—that were impacted by Helene.
People dress up in costume at Studio 131’s Halloween event in Largo, Florida on Oct. 13. 2024Courtesy Studio 131
Some Halloween-themed events in the area helped raise money for victims of the storms. Gerry Cachia, in Seminole, Florida—parts of which experienced significant storm damage from Helene and Milton—organized the Rotary Club of Seminole Lake’s Haunted Graveyard event this year. In the past, the proceedings for the event have gone to help foster kids in the area, but this year, the club decided to give half to hurricane relief efforts.
The event on Oct. 26 included a haunted graveyard set up in the parking lot of a local shopping mall, candy booths throughout, and a costume contest. Cachia dressed up as “The Pumpkin Master” by wearing a suit with pumpkins all over it and a pumpkin mask. He had hoped that the event would help take people’s minds off the fallout from the storms and give them a bit of a break. And he says he thinks it did just that. Roughly 1,200 people showed up, and the club raised nearly $6,000.
The lengths friends and neighbors have gone to to make sure kids and families can enjoy Halloween is consistent with how communities have been coming together in the wake of two brutal natural disasters, people say.
“Neighbors who didn’t know each other before now are best friends,” Cachia says. “You’ll drive around and there’s people that have set up water stations that just were people that want to help. There’s people driving around in the communities with ice and garbage bags and just giving them to people. When you have such a disaster, it really does bring out—it sounds corny to say—but it brings out the good in people.”
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