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MAGNA — The sun beat down on Main Street while zombies, superheroes and other comic book stars wandered through booths of jack-o-lanterns, skeletons and other spooky Halloween stuff.
"I've always loved Halloween," said Renee Anderson, one of the founders of the annual Halloween in Summer Festival. "It's the one day of the year you can be anyone you want to be and nobody cares."
With the festival, now, however, there's two of those days.
It's always Halloween at her house, though, as decor is always out and the front porch looks over the entrance to the local Pleasant Green Cemetery. Renee Anderson and her husband, A.W. Storm Anderson, are "like the Addams family of the area," he said. They even got married on Halloween day nearly 13 years ago.
The two organized the day of summer spooks to play on their own enthusiasm, starting with a mere costume party in the middle of 2010. It was a hit and people keep coming out of the woodwork, so to speak, and Storm Anderson, a tattoo artist, says "the reward is difficult to describe."
"The spirit of Halloween has followed me my whole life," said Jimmy Dilley, who used to fight his mom to keep his Halloween decorations up in his room as a child. As an artist and designer for the Nightmare on 13th haunted house, Dilley has turned his passion for all things eerie into a year-round business.
He keeps up on the scary trends and said ghosts and demons are making a comeback. But he sells out of whatever he makes year after year.
"I used to set up haunted houses in my bedroom," Dilley said. "I'm obsessed. I'm living my dream life. It makes me feel like a kid every single day."
Shannon C., a self-disclosed comic book-lover who asked to keep her last name out of the news, said she named her son Xavier after Professor X in the "X-Men" series. Dressed as Jean Grey from the same comic, she pushed a stroller containing much smaller Wolverine and Professor X look-alikes — her sons.
"I love dressing up," she said. "Even as a professional, I find a way of dressing up every day."
And for her, one of the criteria used in finding a husband was whether he was into "geeky stuff."
The festival, full of geek, has grown every year, getting a nod and a little help with marketing this year from Salt Lake Comic Con, which Storm Anderson said "is big" and definitely helped draw in the crowds.
The street was lined with booths by artists, illustrators, Halloween creators and decorators, costumers, make-up artists, a variety of vendors, food, games, and more. In addition to the street festival portion of the celebration, there was a cosplay costume contest, trick-or-treating and a costume party to round out the fun.
"Utah has a huge base as far as fanaticism for Halloween is concerned," Storm Anderson said. "The state has a lot of creative and talented musicians, performers and artists. We just give them a different outlet to showcase that talent."
And, of course, it helps hold him and his wife over until Halloween is acceptably observed later in the year.
