Halloween in West Philly (Photo by West Philly Local)

The spooky season is here and here’s a great new community resource, created by a local Halloween enthusiast, that will help folks submit and find events.

Dyresha Harris, has created a free West Philly Fright Registry, a Google form where community members from approximately 45th to 60th Streets and Market to Baltimore (it’s not a hard boundary) can register their house or public space to let folks know what spooky thing they’ll be up to during the Halloween season (from giving out candy, to decorations, to events). The resulting Google map would help families and other Halloween revelers know where to go on and leading up to the holiday.

The registration is live now. The map will go live on October 14th (or earlier if there are enough entries). Here is a virtual flyer with links for registration and the eventual map.

“We hope the map will help connect neighbors with each other and celebrate the creativity of our West Philly communities,” writes Dyresha who considers herself “a deep Halloween enthusiast.”

Why a Fright Registry?

“Halloween is a time for creativity and fun,” says Dyresha. “It’s a time to imagine who you could be if there were literally no limits, because sometimes embracing what’s spooky with joy is the best way to become fearless. Halloween is also the only American holiday that is all about interacting with your neighborhood and connecting with the folks who live all around you. And no one does creativity, joy, and community quite like the folks in West [Philly] do!”

Dyresha and her partner Eo Trueblood, who live near Malcolm X Park, have “gone all out” for almost a decade, decorating their house with everything from a 20ft robot to a reenactment of “Stranger Things” to an underwater cave.

“In doing that we have chatted informally with neighbors. And every year on Halloween I see families exchanging this info on the street, like ‘Hey did you know there’s a haunted alley way they do every year down the block?’ ‘No, I’d never heard of it!’ or ‘Yeah they’ve got a candy shoot on 47th and Osage’ ‘What?! We were about to go home, but we’ll go check it out.'”

“I’ve biked around smaller streets like Webster and Farragut and seen Halloween houses off the beaten path that are well worthy of shout outs! So I thought a map would be a fun way to hype each other up, promote block pride, and showcase the creativity of our neighborhoods while helping trick-or-treaters get the most fun out of their Halloween season.”

“We hope the Registry helps us keep West Philly wicked fun!”