On Halloween night in McIntosh, candy will come from above.
From the second story of Mayor Alison Scott’s 1895 pale pink home, her father, among others, will send chocolate down a long three-piece PVC pipe chute that ends in a makeshift cemetery on the front lawn. Costumed kids will line up as the chocolates fall into a waiting bowl.
The candy chute tradition started as a creative solution to COVID-19 regulations. It has continued long after those restrictions were lifted and is now manned by a rotating group of family and friends. And it has since become part of people’s Halloween memories, Scott said.
“There’s a huge area that counts on us to give some sense of community,” she said. “That’s a really special opportunity and privilege.”
The small Marion County town has a median age of about 62.9, which is 20 years older than the state average and 24 years older than the national average, according to Census Reporter. Yet each Halloween, hundreds of young families pour in from across the surrounding rural region, drawn by walkable streets and historic homes for the night. It’s all a part of McIntosh’s latest effort to ensure the next generation keeps coming back.
Frank Ciotti, 79, has lived in McIntosh since 1984. While Halloween itself hasn’t changed much over the past 40 years, more people from neighboring towns have joined the McIntosh celebration, he said. It has since been transformed into a major event.
“In the ‘90s, it started getting busier and busier as the surrounding communities grew,” said Ciotti, a former town councilman who worked as a program specialist at the state Department for Children and Families. “There was more need for a safe space for kids to trick-or-treat.”
His costume is usually a work in progress until the day of, but Ciotti always knows how he plans to celebrate: performing tricks and handing out candy. As children come to a table in front of his house, he bends his arm 180 degrees or puts his hand into a faux hot cauldron.
On an average year, Ciotti usually sees about 600 children, most of them driven in from surrounding towns, he said. He also said that he and his daughter, Kaitlin, 41, a manager at the Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Ocala, bought 1,200 pieces of candy this year to ensure that every child gets a piece, or maybe two each for the youngest who come back and ask nicely.
“It’s tradition,” Ciotti said. Referring to his daughter, he added, “She started out as a young trick-or-treater, and now her children, she brings them.”
This year, for the first time, McIntosh’s parks and recreation advisory board is hosting a Halloween event in collaboration with Cypress Valley Farms. The two-hour celebration at the town’s pavilion will feature a photo opportunity, a costume contest and games for all ages.
“We have some kids here, but they come out of the woodwork for Halloween,” said David Jones, chairman of the advisory board. “The more they see going on that we’re trying to do good for the town, the more involvement I’m hoping we can get other people into.”
Cypress Valley Farms director Ashley Culbreth has visited McIntosh for Halloween long before her agricultural education nonprofit joined its festivities. Her extended family has visited from the various Florida towns they have lived in for two decades, often bringing up to 40 children along with her three. This year will be her first with a grandson.
Culbreth, 39, said she enjoys participating in events in McIntosh because of the comfort of its small, close-knit community, and because everyone there has a voice in how things go.
“The biggest thing about McIntosh right now is that the adults that are in charge are actually listening to the kids going, ‘Hey, this is what we think,”’ she said.
The Culbreths annually attach a stock trailer onto a truck, with children hopping on and off the float – rigged with decorative lights and Halloween tunes – as they ride along Avenue G and through the neighborhoods near U.S. Route 441. The older children typically walk on foot.
“Imagine a Hallmark movie,” Culbreth said. “That’s what McIntosh was when my kids were little. That’s just what we’re trying to bring back.”
Candice Batson from Sparr also views McIntosh as a safer, calmer alternative compared to the traffic and crowds of larger celebrations she tried one year in Ocala. Driveways are lit up, and the streets are safe for walking without heavy car traffic, Batson said.
The 41-year-old stay-at-home mom has celebrated Halloween in McIntosh for 15 years with her sons: Dalton, 24, Easton, 13 and Brantley, 9. Every year, Batson said, she invites new families to join them, many of whom make it a yearly tradition of their own.
As children mature, their Halloween participation in McIntosh often evolves. Over the last few years, Easton has sent candy down the mayor’s candy chute instead of trick-or-treating.
“I hope and pray that when my kids get older, and they have their own kids, they will be able to bring them out there,” Batson said.
However, not everyone in McIntosh is going for a sentimental Halloween experience. Lesley and Kevin Reddick, both in their early ‘60s, call their home “the big haunt in McIntosh.”
For the past nine years, Kevin, the owner of Reddick Brothers Hardware in Micanopy, has spearheaded the setup. As scary as the fog from a smoke machine and the classic Michael Myers song “Halloween Theme” blasting on loop may be, live scare actors set the scene.
Dressed in a Grim Reaper costume, Reddick startles passersby on the street while witchy Lesley scares near the house. Sometimes, they recruit their friends and older kids to act.
“I almost have more fun scaring the parents than the kids, because I know a lot of them from the hardware store, and they don’t know it is me,” Reddick said.
He said his childhood experience in McIntosh during Halloween was different from what it is now. It wasn’t as crowded as it is now, and people didn’t visit from out of town, he said.
Parents always thank the Reddicks, and last year, for the first time, they were approached by teenagers who had been coming to their house since they were children.
“The more people who keep this tradition going, the more trick-or-treaters you get,” Lesley Reddick said. “There’s nothing like going to a little town and going door-to-door trick-or-treating.”
And as more young families visit town, the mayor said, more may be willing to stay.
“If there’s ever a holiday that could help people fall in love with this place, it could potentially be Halloween,” Scott said. “If there’s ever a new place they wanted to call home, it could be McIntosh.”