Nightmare on Maple 2025
- Emily Cristofich
- Nov 3, 2025
- 2 min read
Every Halloween the Bandera Marshal's Office puts on 'Nightmare on Maple Street' inside Bandera City Park. Local business set up trunk-or-treat booths to give out candy. There were also bounce houses, pizza, face painting, DJ, and a costume contest!
Last year was our first time setting up a trunk-or-treat booth. It was a huge success! Our line stayed long the whole evening. But we were really not prepared for that kind of crowd. We ran out of candy and didn't have lights for when it got dark. This year we started preparing months in advance. We had lots of help from our Heritage Oak Rescue family and it went much smoother.
Our Vice President Breanna Robison worked hard cutting out cardboard and painting them for our front decorations.
A generous donor supplied us with lights for inside and out of the haunted trailer. They looked amazing when it got dark!
Several families that regularly come to the basic horsemanship lessons came by to help hold horses for the public to interact with, hand out candy, or greet people at the front of the trailer. We actually had more helpers than we needed! That made the day much easier.
I really wanted to bring Osa to her first event, unfortunately she couldn't make the step up into our volunteer's trailer. She has trouble extending her front legs for trimming so I had a feeling it would be hard for her. When we decided to give up on loading Osa I made the last minute decision to bring Blackjack instead. We kept him in the pen behind our booth and he got to watch everything going on. Blackjack tests people's boundaries and his playful lipping of your arm can quickly turn into a full on bite so he's still not good for beginners.
We cut up carrots and apples for people to feed the horses when they came through. They could pet the horses and take photos with them. Seeing the look of joy on kids faces (and adults) when they were brave enough to let the horse grab a treat out of their hand was so special.
We are so excited to get the award for 'Best Business Trunk'! We couldn't have done it without our amazing volunteers! To see more videos of the event, check out our Instagram!
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