Halloween costumes in St. Thomas get two outings in a row this year. The Downtown Pumpkin Prowl brings trick-or-treating to Talbot Street on Friday, October 23rd, and PumpkinFest fills the Horton Farmers’ Market the next morning, Saturday, October 24th.
The Prowl runs from 5 to 7 p.m. Get the kids in costume and visit the participating downtown businesses for treats and spooky surprises. The Downtown Development Board puts on the event.
Before you go, print a Potion Sheet, the Prowl’s passport. You can download it from the Prowl’s website any time from Monday, October 19th, until the event. Fill it in for a chance to win one of eight $50 prize packs of Downtown Dollars.
Talbot Street will be closed to traffic from 4 to 7:30 p.m. that Friday evening, from Manitoba Street to Elgin Street, except at the Ross Street intersection. City council approved the closure on September 8th. Buses will take a temporary detour, and City staff said the route will be posted ahead of time.
PumpkinFest runs from 8 a.m. to noon at the Horton Farmers’ Market, 10 Manitoba Street, half a block north of Talbot. It is the market’s take on the fall fair tradition. Along with your usual shopping, there are pop-ups and friendly contests for ribbons and bragging rights. You can enter photography, baking, pumpkin painting or carving, or costumes, and each visitor contest is split by age so everyone has a fair shot. Visitor prizes are paid in Horton Market Dollars, which work like cash with the market’s vendors. Vendors have a costume contest of their own, with market space as the prize. During market hours you can also guess a pumpkin’s weight or the number of pumpkin seeds.
If you plan to enter, mind the deadlines. Photos are due by email by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, October 20th. Baking and pumpkins must be at the market by 8:30 a.m. on October 24th, and late entries are not accepted. The rules also ask pumpkin entrants to pre-register at a Saturday market before PumpkinFest. The last Saturday market before the 24th has already passed, so ask the market first if you hope to enter a pumpkin. Visitors in the costume contest sign up at the market between 10 and 10:30 a.m., costume judging starts at 10:30, and entrants must stay until the winners are announced. Pumpkin winners are picked by public vote. Entries stay at the market until 11:30 a.m. and must be picked up by noon, or they are thrown out and any ribbon or prize is lost. The entry form and full rules are on the market’s PumpkinFest page.
The market has been running since 1878, and PumpkinFest comes one week before its main season ends on Saturday, October 31st, Halloween itself. Winter at Horton, indoors only, starts November 21st.
The St. Thomas Public Library is promoting PumpkinFest too, and its Facebook post lists free activities throughout PumpkinFest, including kids’ crafts, storytime, pumpkin bowling, recipe demos and a selfie station.
The library, at 153 Curtis Street, has two Halloween programs of its own the week of the Prowl. Genre Lab: Horror! on Tuesday, October 20th, from 6 to 8 p.m., is for adults 18 and up, with dark new reads, a horror-themed craft in the Maker Lab on the lower level, and a scary photo spot. On Saturday, October 24th, from 2 to 4 p.m., two hours after the market closes, Make It Scary Good! is a drop-in for all ages: bring a costume idea and use the library’s hot glue guns, sequins, embroidery floss and pom poms to pull it off. No registration is needed.
Sources: Downtown Pumpkin Prowl · Horton Farmers’ Market: PumpkinFest · City of St. Thomas Report ES-52-26: 2026 Pumpkin Prowl road closure
By Anthony Zruna · About the LocVox Newsroom
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