NATCHITOCHES – The City of Natchitoches will sponsor Witch Way to Main Street in downtown Natchitoches on Monday, Nov. 1, 2010 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Children 12 years old and under will be allowed to trick-or-treat at participating downtown shops. Area organizations and businesses will also have booths set up along Front Street distributing candy and offering carnival type games and activities. Children must be in costume and accompanied by an adult to participate. Candy will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Natchitoches police officers will be on duty to ensure children’s safety. Front Street will be shut down from the Church to Lafayette Street, beginning at 3 p.m. The downtown riverbank will remain open for through traffic and parking.

The City of Natchitoches will observe neighborhood trick-or-treating for Halloween on Sunday, Oct. 31 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

For more information about Witch Way to Main Street, please call the Main Street Office at (318) 352-2746.

The Natchitoches Historic Foundation invites you to find out what’s haunted about Natchitoches while being terrifically entertained as it resurrects some of the most colorful characters in the history of the Louisiana Purchase.  The Spirit Hunters Paranormal Investigations will once again be in town to report their findings. The tour will be held in the American Cemetery on Second Street.  Admission $10 for adults and $5 for children and students. Tickets available at the Natchitoches Parish Tourist Commission, 781 Front Street and at the American Cemetery during the Tour. For more information call (800) 259-1714 or visit www.historicfoundation.org.

Facing throngs of seasoned and fresh victims alike this 2009 season, haunted attraction owners, producers and make up departments are looking for new chills, creeps and creatures to leap from the nighttime shadows. A fresh new look, for a familiar character, will be transforming scare-actors and scare-zones in scream parks and haunted houses across the country this Halloween into rampaging werewolves.

According to Jason Grimm, of GrimmBrothersHalloween.com, there is no need for ancient curses, wolfsbane or full moon light to transform you or your haunt actors into something not quite human, with the exclusive Grimm Brothers Big Bad Wolf Foam Latex Werewolf Appliance. Busch Gardens Howl-O-Scream in Williamsburg, Virginia  and Thrillvania Screampark in Dallas, Texas are among the national attractions that have chosen the Big Bad Wolf as the unsettling face of their 2009 season werewolves .

“What I love most about the Big Bad Wolf prosthetic is that you can paint it up to get a different look. If you want a Wolfman look or if you want a partial transformation look, this prosthetic is great for both! I’m looking forward to using it this season at Thrillvania.” – Misty Bennet, Makeup/SPFX Manager, Thrillvania Scream Park, Dallas, Texas

The Big Bad Wolf is a re-imagining of a well-known face to pop culture and movie fans, yet new and unfamiliar to many haunted attraction patrons. It provides a horrific transformation into a life-like, believable character to scare and interact with the patron and just the right amount of animal rage for the haunter who has a love for lycans.

Custom sculpted in the tradition of Lon Chaney Jr.’s classic wolf man, the professional appliance strays from the more wolven looks of recent werewolf masks and popular film, back to the canine-cursed features of the traditional man-wolf. In designing the appliance with realism in mind, cut away cheek areas, covered by many other appliances, allow the actor wearing the piece to incorporate natural facial hair or a beard to add to the realism of the look with little additional theatrical hair. Details are expertly sculpted and cast in high-quality foam latex for extremely life-like textures, expression and . The Big Bad Wolf is made in the USA exclusively for Grimm Brothers.

This appliance is available through  Halloween Specialty Store online at www.GrimmBrothersHalloween.com.

In 1848, the “spiritualism” movement swept the US and the world. This movement gained momentum VERY quickly, and several “mediums” began to get rich off a grieving public who could not let go of loved ones who had passed. These mediums would claim to bring messages from the other side to help “heal” the grief of people…. for a price. Society was a lot different back then, and in general people were very uneducated, so in 1850 the scientific community as a whole created the field of parapsychology to try and debunk these “mystics.”

The top minds of that time got together to try to figure out how these “psychics” performed their parlor tricks. Their roster included people like Sir William Crooks (discovered cathode rays, x-rays, and the electron), Sir Oliver Lodge (responsible for advancements in physics, early research into electricity, worked on radio, and credited by Albert Einstein, who used Lodge’s research to develop his theory of relativity), Henry Sidgwick, Fredrick Myers, and British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour. Later non-scientific people joined this field like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lewis Carroll, William Gladstone, Harry Houdini, Mark Twain, and the first ghost hunter, Harry Price.

It was not until 1924 that they come across a “psychic” they could not debunk. Her name was Mina Crandon, a.k.a. Margery. Since they could not debunk her, they were forced to label her as legitimate and spawned a rage in the scientific community. Harry Houdini tried throughout his career as a parapsychologist to “debunk” her and remained unsuccessful to his death. Because of Margery, the scientific community turned their backs on this field, and in their minds it has been a quasi-science ever since, even though they themselves created this field to investigate various aspects of the paranormal as we do now.

We still use the same theories that were first developed by Harry Price, although through technology we have gone farther than he had ever dreamed possible. Through the use of EMF meters, thermal scanners, Geiger counters, and other technology, we have proven his thoughts to be accurate concerning the atmospheric deviations “ghosts” create. The media hype concerning ghosts and psychics is creating a new “spiritualism” movement in this millennium, and it is only a matter of time before the scientific community as a whole embraces us, their long lost sister, to help combat this movement and prove frauds of those people who profit from others’ misery.

Everything we do in this field is vital for the new foundation of parapsychology. Unlike “psychics,” our equipment is nonjudgmental and cannot be tampered with by the minds of men. They simply tell the truth as to what is occurring in a location. I believe that we are more legitimate than someone who simply “feels” something in a home, something that cannot be supported with evidence.