Why cancel Downtown Halloween 2020? – Everyone will be masked, right?

What’s not to LOVE about Downtown Halloween – even in 2020 – during Front Royal’s final weekend walking mall experiment? – Especially when you have escaped the clutches of a looming T-Rex as Amber and her costumed dog Quincy did. Royal Examiner Photos and Video by Roger Bianchini

Some other Trick or Treating K-9’s may be wondering exactly what is going on with that roaming dinosaur now playing camera-friendly with Bransen and Braygin Isner.

Wait, is T-Rex trying to get a high-5 from these kids?

The pumpkins appear to have established a security perimeter around the musical base of operations …

… As well as around the White Picket Fence and Key Move Properties site.

However, no pumpkin security at Ellen Aders State Farm candy distribution table next to East Main Street’s new “I Want Candy” store.

Above, under the watchful eye of proprietor Ralph Waller, aka ‘the mayor of Main St.’ in white jacket to right, a ghoulish crowd begins gathering outside Main Street Pawn as even the local political committees got into the giving-away spirit. – Below we get a wave from now State Republican Committee official Steve Kurtz.

Just a few doors up East Main the Democrats were in full candy distribution mode as well.

And a little further west on East Main two independent local town council candidates continued the political giving spirit. Below, moved to their respective signs during a candy break – just in case you didn’t recognize Betty Showers and Josh Ingram in costume.

Uh oh, the Joker’s on the run – that CAN’T be good.

From bad to worse: Pennywise, Stephen King’s famous scary clown of our nightmares, and pals. ‘We all float down here, kids’.

Phunky Woodverx – buy or we’ll put a spell on you …

A Wizard of Oz family outing, from left, the Tin Man, Dorothy, the Straw Man and cowardly Lion being carried into the fray.

I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore – lost in the clouds on Cloud Street at East Main.

And just when you thought you were safe again in the pumpkin perimeter …

… You run into ghosts ‘carrying’ people away from the safe zone.

Having escaped a short way up Chester Street we encountered this unexpected gathering of spirits on the porch of the Va. Beer Museum – a skeletal apparition, and a more comforting ‘spirit’ of the Beer Museum variety.

Well our skeletal spirit must not have been THAT scary, as she befriends a young unicorn over the promise of candy.

Sponge Bob and 3 of a 101 Dalmatians

Some Superheroes on the candy take

If some Ghostbusters are chasing a ghost up the street, that must be a wrap on this Downtown Halloween 2020 HORROR story. Well, it won’t be a REAL horror story as long as our pandemic case numbers don’t spike in its wake.