Walking down Roberts Row this past Sunday, students were greeted with a most unusual sight: cows, butterflies, tigers and vampires running from dorm to dorm, carrying crafts and candy.

This was no hallucination, but part of the Halloween Extravaganza, an annual event organized by the Colby Volunteer Center (CVC) that invites children and families from Waterville to go trick-or-treating on the Hill. Each participating dorm features a different Halloween-themed activity, from haunted houses to bobbing for apples.

The CVC puts on this event in an attempt to bridge the gap between the College and the local community, as well as to offer children who might not get the opportunity to go trick-or-treating in their own neighborhoods the chance to have fun and be safe on Halloween.

One mother who attended the event with her 10-year-old daughter (who dressed as a princess) said that while they did plan on going trick-or-treating later that night, she thinks the Halloween Extravaganza offers an appealing alternative for other families, as “it gets dark, and cold for the younger kids.”

This was the mother’s first year coming to the Hill, and she learned about the event from a flyer her daughter brought home from elementary school. In East Quad, where kids were challenged to eat doughnuts off of a string with no hands, the mother said that so far their experience at the event had been “wonderful.”

“It’s very nice of the students to put this event on,” the mother said. “I’m assuming they’re all volunteers.”

Another parent piped in, saying she appreciates that the event offers a variety of activities that “are appropriate for all ages.” Her daughter said her favorite activity was mask making, as she proudly displayed the cat mask she made.

When asked about how the mother’s other three children were enjoying the event, she laughed and replied that only one of them was hers. “I gather everyone else’s kids and bring them,” she said. “We’ve been coming for years.”

The Halloween Extravaganza is not only fun for families from Waterville—it’s also fun for students on the Hill who help to organize and run each station, or even those that just pass by little Cinderellas or Spidermen on their way to Miller Library.

“It was a really nice break from doing homework on a Sunday afternoon to go down to my lobby and see small kids eating doughnuts off of strings,” Sara Mason ’12 said.