The City of Halloween is closing the 2025 chapter of spooky scary skeletons and heading steadfast into a holly holiday on Sunday, Nov. 1.
Conway City Administrator Adam Emrick said the tear-down crew of about 35 city employees and volunteers hit the decks at 10 p.m. Sunday night and the Christmas crew started to deck the halls at 6 a.m. Monday morning.
About six weeks of decorating went into transforming Conway into the nationally acclaimed City of Halloween and it’s all swept away over one night.
“It’s a little faster to take down than to put up. There’s a lot more thought going into putting it up. And when we take it down, we don’t put it away right away. So, we take it down and we stage it. Make sure things aren’t broken or need to be fixed. It isn’t quite as fast as it looks,” he said. “To make the magic of Christmas, you have to do it in one night.”
Four bucket trucks tackled the lights and pumpkins along Main Street. Other technicians and volunteers worked to break down animatronics and stage the decorations at the Town Green on Laurel Street.
“These guys are very skilled. There’s not training on putting up lights, but there’s training on the bucket truck and they’re really good with it,” Emrick said. “Nobody else does the trees like we do. So, I don’t know, these guys are skilled.”
Construction service technician Tanner Stroud has spent the past four Octobers lighting and placing the pumpkins in the trees on Main Street and said he just aims to make it look good.
“Just fill in the holes, the gaps. We just take zip ties and zip them onto the limbs and when we take them down, we just cut the zip ties and bring the buckets (pumpkins) down,” Stroud said. “It normally takes us three nights to [set up] what you see here.”
But the deconstruction is completed in one evening. Stroud also helps build and design decorations and signs for other seasons in Conway and Emrick said seasonal decoration planning begins a year in advance of the holiday.
“It’s always something different and good people to be around,” Stroud said.
The City’s Victims’ Advocate Nickey Richardson joined the tear-down crew on Main Street with her daughter and said the 2025 Halloween season in Conway was featured in Southern Living, HGTV and garnered international guests.
“Every year it’s fresh new ideas and it’s gotten bigger and better. The skeleton adoption, that was Monday through Friday, has taken off. People came from Ontario, all over the United States, but literally Canada,” Richardson said. “They’re little action figure sizes and it took off like wildfire.”
The ‘Skeleton Adoption Agency’ is exclusive to Conway, South Carolina, according to Richardson. She said the ‘Haunted Orphanage’ is found in the upstairs courtroom of Conway’s city hall.
“People go up the haunted elevator, into the haunted courtroom, which is the orphanage, and that’s the Skeleton Adoption Agency,” Richardson said. “It’s just the neatest thing. It’s good for children and adults. The adults get more out of it than the children do. The little legs move, so it’s interactive. Mine sits on my dash. Sometimes he’ll sit, sometimes he’ll stand. It just depends on what mood I’m in is what my skeleton is doing. I keep him out, his name is Rufus. He’s two years old.”
She added the skeletons came with an adoption certificate, were free of charge and needed constant restocking.
Other 86-ed items in Conway were scattered throughout restaurants that saw record-breaking business in the month of October, according to Emrick. He said the owner of the Crafty Rooster and Chantis saw the highest sales in the restaurant’s history two weekends in a row.
“They’ve been open for 15 years. So it’s just awesome to be able to generate that much foot traffic that has that much impact on the restaurants.” Emrick said. “We’ve got several small, local chains that have done the best numbers [in Conway].”
Emrick said they try to out-do themselves each year with the decorations and Christmas will be in full swing the Thursday after Thanksgiving.
“The difference in the Christmas lights is the spirit. We have the orange and the purple, but it’ll just be white lights throughout, just white lights. It’s going to be a white Christmas in Conway,” Richardson said.