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Third St. Albert Scavenger Haunt aims to be spookiest yet

Organizers hope to have 20 St. Albert businesses acting as destinations for kids hoping to fill their passports and enter a draw for prizes
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The Hocus Focus photo booth at the end of the Scavenger Haunt in 2023.

It’s never too early to start thinking about Halloween.

Just ask Canadian Tire, Walmart, or Rebecca Krecsy-Chambers. For three years now the owner, marketing boss at Chambers Plumbing and Heating and “huge Halloweener” has been running a free, city-wide Scavenger Haunt. As August gives way to everything after, she’s already seeing orange and saying “Beetlejuice” twice but never thrice to the ghosts in the attic.

Is her place “that” house on the block come Oct. 31?

“Oh, yes," she said. "I’ve already purchased the new stuff for this year. My husband's very supportive of my obsession with this holiday.”

Krecsy-Chambers is looking for St. Albert businesses to take part in this year’s kid-focused, stamp-chasing, month-long extravaganza. As in past years, participants aged two to 17 can pick up an empty passport at Pearson’s Independent Grocer starting Oct. 1. They’ll have until Oct. 25 to fill it with stamps from each of the participating businesses. Kids with full passports can enter a draw for prizes which in 2023 included gaming consoles, an e-scooter and an iPad.

This year, there is talk of a hoverboard.

“I wanted to do something that was completely free for the community and kind of combined all my passions,” which include supporting local businesses, she said. “So that's kind of how it came to be. What we decided to do was provide all of the marketing materials for the participating businesses and heavily promote them throughout both events. The goal is to have folks discover local gems that they might not have known about.”

There are 13 businesses planning to take part so far; Krecsy-Chambers is shooting for 20. This year, there are three grand prizes plus other giveaways of items from participating stores.

Krecsy-Chambers has partnered once again with photographer and fellow Halloweener Sheila Bell to set up Hocus Focus, a photo booth that benefits the St. Albert Food Bank and Community Village. The kids can take their filled passports to St. Albert Place Oct. 26 and have their picture taken in their costumes for a donation.

“It just goes to show how generous the St. Albert business owners really are,” she said. “We're just going to continue doing this. I love it. It's so much fun and you know, the more, the scarier.”

Krecsy-Chambers said 100 kids took part in year one of the scavenger haunt, and about 300 last year.

Jeff Baker of One Bite Technology can vouch for those numbers (and since his in-laws live down the street from Krecy-Chambers, he can vouch for her Halloween yard display, too). He said the store, which fixes and upgrades devices and is an authorized Apple product reseller, was much busier during the second scavenger haunt than the first.

“Good on them for planning it,” he said. “Really, the whole purpose of it is just to get people in and aware of all these little small businesses, which is nice.”

Baker was involved in an Amazing Race-ish event called Escape St. Albert “a million years ago,” (it was 2017, and it’s still on Facebook) and was happy to jump onboard when Chambers Plumbing and Heating launched their own. He said it was his suggestion to make the kids search for a Halloween-themed character or doll hidden somewhere in the store, giving their parents time to browse.

“They all love it, of course,” Baker said of the front-desk staff who tend to be the ones stamping the passports. “And then it's kind of fun to give hints to the kids if they can't find where we hid it. I'll have to do a different spot this year.”

Any brick-and-mortar businesses that want to take part can email [email protected].




Craig Gilbert

About the Author: Craig Gilbert

Craig is a thoroughly ink-stained award-winning writer and photographer originally from Northern Ontario. Please don’t hold that against him.
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