Little Five Points Halloween Events pivot for 2021 Festival

Little Five Points Halloween Parade and Festival normally attracts upwards of 70,000 visitors to Atlanta’s most eclectic neighborhood. Just like last year, the festival organizers canceled this year’s in-person parade, but festivities are still continuing. The neighborhood has a full slate of celebratory events over the coming weeks. Melanie Rabb, one of the owners of the Corner Tavern and board member of the L5P Business Association, and contributing artist to Little Five Points’ Monster Fest, Sam Carter, joined “City Lights” Senior Producer Kim Drobes to talk about this year’s specially adapted festival events. 

Rabb shared the Association’s hesitations about hosting the traditional parade, given the massive numbers the event usually draws from all over the Atlanta area and beyond. “We weren’t sure at the beginning of the year how things were going to go, and I’m glad we waited. We still don’t think it’s time to overwhelm the neighborhood, but definitely want to have some fun things going on and spread it out,” said Rabb. 

“So we’ve got ghost tours Friday and Saturday through the first week of November,” continued Rabb. “We’re participating in the Atlanta Celebrates Photography Festival, so twenty winning photographs are going to be in storefronts all through Little Five for a self-guided tour. And then the cherry on the pumpkin sundae is Monster Fest.”

To avoid big, potentially unsafe gatherings, the businesses of Little Five Points, with the help of Shane Morton of Silver Scream FX Lab, created Monster Fest, where monsters designed by local artists will haunt shops and hangouts throughout the neighborhood. On Oct. 16, visitors can grab a map from the L5P Business Association’s tent and hunt down the monsters while competing to win a prize. The hunter who takes a selfie next to all the artworks of the Monster Hunt gets a copy of Little Five Points Monster Magazine, featuring all the participating artists spooking up the neighborhood. 

Contributing artist Sam Carter calls himself a “professional art goon for hire,” who works on props and fabrication for film sets, among other projects wherever funny characters and strange monsters are needed. For Monster Fest, Carter said, “I’m actually repurposing a mascot for another project of mine, a ‘maker’ show called ‘Make It Weird.’ It’s a YouTube show that’s trying to teach families, younger kids some of the basics of prop and puppet building, and set-piece buildings — things that they can go out and make their own monster movies with.”

The mascot he borrowed from “Make It Weird” is Cosmo, a “giant psychedelic Sasquatch,” as Carter calls him. “He’s built as a functioning puppet, and … I’ll have him a couple of other creations on display, as well as some custom-made trick-or-treating buckets that I’m going to have to give out to people who show up in costume, who impress me with their cool costumes.”

Along with ghost tours all month long and the Oct. 16 – 17 weekend Monster Fest, Little Five Points will also host “Professor Morty’s Haunted Market,” occupying Euclid Avenue and the Little Five Points Community Center, as well as a Sunday “Cocktail Parade,” where several neighborhood bars will have specially-created “monster cocktails.” More information about these and all the other events in the Little Five Points Halloween Festival are available at www.l5phalloween.com.