11 Photos: The final High Cliff Halloween Event – Why we will miss it. Must See!
Some traditions you don’t realize you’re going to miss until you’re standing in the middle of one for the last time. This was the final trick-or-treat Halloween event at the High Cliff State Park Campground, held on October 18th, 2025 — and the campers went all out to send it off in style.
We got there while there was still a little daylight left in the trees, and even then you could tell it was going to be something special. The very first campsite set the tone: a giant grinning jack-o’-lantern balloon floating over a witch, a red-eyed Grim Reaper, and a little gang of pint-sized skeletons keeping watch over their carved pumpkins. From there on, every site we passed was trying to outdo the last.
As the sky went dark, the whole campground transformed. String lights in orange and purple wove through the trees and spilled across the ground until the forest floor itself seemed to glow. One site had a towering skeleton with a lit-up skull and ribcage burning orange against the night; another had a whole haunted-castle archway packed with Frankenstein, a mummy, and a witch, with fog rolling out across the path.
My favorites, though, were the handmade touches — the campsites with rows of hand-painted plywood cutouts lined up along their picket fences. Friendly ghosts, pumpkins, a whole little train of monsters waving goodbye under a sign that read “The End.” You could tell people had spent weeks building these displays. There was even an outdoor movie playing for the costumed kids wandering site to site with their candy bags.
That’s what makes it hard to see this one go. This wasn’t a commercial haunted attraction — it was a community of campers who decorated their own little corners of the woods, year after year, just to give local kids a magical night. If this really was the last one, I’m glad we got to walk through it one final time. These eleven photos don’t quite do the place justice, but I hope they capture a little of the magic.
