The Zombie Crawl has been a tradition for seven years in Eureka Springs, and this year the parade brought out a crowd estimated at about 15,000.
“Last year was the biggest we had yet and this year there were four or five times as many participants in the parade as last year even,” said Christina Danos, co-organizer with her husband, Jeff. “It was crazy. We had 589 people signed up to be in the crawl, and there were more than 20 vehicles, including some with floats. The estimate we got from the police and the mayor’s office was there were 15,000 people downtown. That was based on the parking lots we had people using and what B&Bs and hotels reported.”
Why has this event exploded in popularity? Danos attributes that to the excitement building up to Halloween and the event being family friendly.
“This is something families can do and the kids are having fun and the parents are having fun,” Danos said. “Lots of people were getting really creative with their costumes and would have a theme for their family or the group they came with. It is just for fun and I think that is the main draw. And it is something different. We had a lot of people this year who didn’t come before. We heard several people this year say this is a family tradition. For our son, we’ve been doing it half of his life. So, it’s definitely a tradition in our family.”
Zombie Crawl participants were asked to donate two cans of food to the Flint Street Fellowship food pantry and lunchroom. This is the first year spectators were also asked to donate food.
“We had volunteers stationed at the food bank earlier in the day,” Danos said. “People could pull up their vehicles, drop off food and sign up to be in the crawl. We were very happy with the amount of food collected.”
Pat Kasner, director of the Flint Street Fellowship, said the large amount of food donations were perfect timing coming before work becomes harder to find due to an economy based on tourism that declines in winter months.
“It’s perfect timing just before everything starts changing in town,” Kasner said. “We have greater demand in the winter because people don’t have the work they had, like yard maintenance. That, plus the slowdown in tourism work makes a big difference. Also, people will start having heating bills. And when the holidays come, there is a greater demand. People just need more over the holidays. The higher demand goes into March or April when things pick up here again.”
Kasner said the Zombie Crawl donations also brought in larger variety of food than the food bank normally has. She estimated at least 1,500 pounds of food were donated.
Flint Street volunteer Mary Jo Rozumalski said that there were so many Zombie Crawl participants who came into the food pantry Saturday that it was hard to walk around.
“You couldn’t hardly drive around downtown,” she said. “People going up and down Main Street had a heck of a time. If someone needed to turn, cars would back up behind them. All were looking for a parking place and there weren’t any to be had. You had to really look.”
Rozumalski said she enjoyed the many visitors.
“They were happy people anticipating a nice day and going to a fun activity,” she said. “It was nice to be around them. And it just seemed to me with that many people in town, it looked very promising for the restaurants and stores. I can’t imagine how much money this brought to town. October traditionally is our best month for tourism anyhow.”
Mayor Butch Berry said they wouldn’t know the exact economic impact for a while.
“However, I do know the town was full and very few rooms, if any, were available over the weekend,” Berry said. “This was a major economic driver for the city. Visitors from all over the U.S. participated in this event, many for the first time.”