The Fall Carnival is the McCleary Wildcat Boosters largest fundraiser of the year and this year’s carnival, which was held on Saturday, Oct. 11 at the McCleary Elementary School, featured carnival games, a silent auction, a cake walk and a new twist on the haunted hallway.

And there were costumes aplenty; kids who dressed up received five free carnival tickets.

The carnival activities included a dime toss, plinko and shooting hoops hosted by the Elma youth basketball. For the silent auction, baskets featuring fall-themed products, pet essentials, Seattle Kraken swag and gift certificates were donated by local businesses and organizations.

Local organizations also turned out to support the McCleary Wildcat Boosters’ Fall Carnival. In one of the classrooms, Timberland Regional Library hosted a bookmark-making station and opportunities to play with cubelets and straws and connectors, all of which proved to be popular with kids and their parents. At their booth, the McCleary Historical Society gave away candy and advertised upcoming events, and the Bear Festival royalty hosted a crazy hair station.

Instead of a haunted hallway, which has been done in past years, booster members Erin Catterlin and Jewell Holcomb reimagined the school’s library as a haunted library filled with ghostly scenes of skeletons, creepy spiders and eerie sounds.

“The haunted stuff is usually a big hit,” said Terra Giannotti, president of the McCleary Wildcat Boosters.

Turning the school into the Fall Carnival meant volunteers began setting up on Friday afternoon and working into the evening, with the final touches made Saturday afternoon before the carnival opened. On Sunday, volunteers tore down everything to ready the school for Monday. Parents, teachers, and the kids benefiting from the fundraising came out to help.

“The booster kids, the kids that get pulled into it because their parents are in the boosters, help a lot,” said Giannotti. “And then we had Bear Festival royalty help a lot this year. They ran a booth, and they came and helped us set up.”

As the carnival neared ending time Giannotti said it had been a blur as to how many people attended and that during the first hour, it was hard to keep count of people coming in.

Looking ahead to other year-end activities, the McCleary Wildcat Boosters will hold mother-son dodgeball, a father-daughter night, a book fair and the Wildcat Gift Shop. For the gift shop, this will be its second year and the booster member organizing this event is already collecting items.

To learn more about the upcoming events, visit the McCleary Wildcat Boosters Facebook page -https://www.facebook.com/mccleary.pto.