CONWAY — Tony Zack did a quick doubletake as he rounded the corner of Laurel Street and Second Avenue during his Monday evening walk.
Why was a 10-foot skeleton standing beside the city planning office? By the time he noticed the plastic pumpkin-laden trees and the 12-foot grim reaper scarecrow, it clicked: Conway was again dressing up as Halloween.
“They named the city Halloween,” said Zack, who has lived in Conway for about 17 years. “I know it was just (a stunt, but) it’s a lot of fun. It’s just different.”
Rebranding Conway as the city of Halloween is also lucrative. What started as a gimmick by local officials last year to generate some seasonal buzz morphed into a monthlong celebration that provided a boost in fall tourism to the city of 27,000-plus.
Conway officials reported an 18 percent average increase in retail and restaurant sales, and a nearly 6 percent increase in hospitality revenue. The city’s downtown saw more than 20 times the number of visitors that it did the previous October.
“This little thing that we did that really didn’t cost us anything was huge for the city,” said City Administrator Adam Emrick, who is scheduled to speak next month at the International City/County Management Association conference in Austin, Texas. His session is titled “Halloween, South Carolina: How we won October.”
Unlike South Carolina’s tourism engine on the coast, Conway, which sits about 15 miles outside Myrtle Beach, doesn’t see big summer crowds. For many beachbound tourists, the city is essentially a gas stop on the way to the ocean.
Recognizing Conway’s peak tourism season runs from September through May, city officials in recent years refocused their marketing, promoting events in the fall, winter and spring.
“When we made that change, it changed everything for us as a downtown and we have seen so many returns on those investments, and we want to continue to do that,” said Hillary Howard, executive director of Conway Downtown Alive, which promotes city tourism. “We want people to be proud of where they live. We want people to come visit them because they live in Conway, not because they’re close to the beach.”
The idea for a seasonal rebranding emerged in January 2022 when Emrick was planning the city’s fall events.
Conway had already enhanced its decorating by placing hundreds of plastic jack-o-lanterns in trees in 2019 and later hanging black hats over the fountain beside City Hall to create a “witches’ garden.”
“We were trying to figure out how we were going to up the ante,” Emrick said. “We just couldn’t figure out what we were going to do. What are we going to do to make it more?”
Emrick had previously tweaked the design of the city logo, adding ghosts and bats to make it look like a haunted house for October promotions. He started the same task again, this time looking for something more powerful, something iconic. On a whim, he substituted the city’s name with Halloween.
“That looks awesome,” he remembers thinking. “What if we did that?”
He asked other city staff and they liked the idea. Then he called the mayor. She was in, too.
For the month of October, Conway would be called Halloween.
With everyone on board, Emrick began planning what he dubbed Project October. The idea wasn’t just to temporarily change the city’s name, but to build a calendar of community events focused on the season. The goal was to encourage businesses and nonprofits to join in the fun, so it wasn’t just a bunch of city-sponsored festivities.
City officials asked the organizer of the Christmas boat parade to offer a Halloween boat parade. They went to First United Methodist Church and asked them to plan an event around the church’s pumpkin patch. The chamber of commerce’s annual meeting even took on a Halloween theme.
City officials also looked for gaps in the schedule. Where there were voids, they scheduled movie showings and created a haunted trail called the Forest of Fear.
“I do think downtown Conway does lend itself to the spooky season with our live oak trees and our dripping Spanish moss and our spooky alleyways,” said Howard of Conway Downtown Alive. “It just lends itself to this type of décor, so why not play up on the assets you have, right?”
The move proved to be successful for some city businesses. Conway’s downtown restaurants, in particular, reported significant revenue increases between October 2021 and October 2022, due to the increased traffic.
Crafty Rooster saw a 21.48 percent increase, Groucho’s Deli saw a 21.34 percent increase, Crooked Oak Tavern saw a 19.75 percent increase and Chanti’s Pizza saw a 14.98 percent increase, according to city records.
Chris Snyder, the owner of Crooked Oak Tavern, said the decorations help draw large crowds, which bolsters his restaurant’s busiest season. He said he enjoys how Conway decorates downtown for not only Halloween, but also for Christmas and other holidays.
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“That’s one of the things (customers) say they love, especially new people that have moved here,” Snyder said. “They love that small-town feel and that everything’s always decorated for different seasons and different holidays.”
Conway’s turn as Halloween is unique in South Carolina.
Officials with the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism couldn’t find any records of other Palmetto State cities or towns changing their names for promotional purposes.
Nationally, there are some examples. Glendale, Ariz., briefly became Swift City during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, and Mayo, Fla., was temporarily called Miracle Whip.
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“But most of those have to do with creating marketing buzz for big businesses,” Sam Queen, SCPRT’s director of corporate communications, said in an email. “As a state, we promote fall as South Carolina’s ‘cooler kind of summer,’ so kudos to Conway for creatively capitalizing on the season.”
So where does Halloween, er, Conway go from here?
City officials estimate they will hang close to 3,000 plastic pumpkins in the coming weeks. They purchased additional orange ones for the city, as well as teal pumpkins to decorate Coastal Carolina University, pink pumpkins to adorn Conway Medical Center and blue ones for Horry-Georgetown Technical College.
Emrick said the city originally wanted to buy 2,000 additional orange pumpkins for this season, but they were only able to get 500.
“We go to every Walmart and buy them out,” he said. “We’ve been doing that since 2020. Every Walmart in the county we go to.”
Additionally, this year the city purchased 10 10-foot skeletons, three 12-foot skeletons, a 12-foot scarecrow and a 12-foot mummy. The idea is to be fun without going too scary.
“We have to stay ‘Haunted Mansion,’ not ‘Exorcist,’” Emrick said.
Along with the décor, an array of Halloween and fall-themed events are already planned for October in Conway, including festivals, movie nights, wine tastings, pumpkin patches, parades, haunted trails and a pickleball tournament.
The city also plans to hold a Halloween golf cart and Coastal Carolina University homecoming parade Oct. 28, and continue its annual Ghost Walk Oct. 18-21.
Despite the popularity of the spooky spectacle, city officials know that not everyone is on board with living in Halloween. Yet city leaders insist the Conway-as-Halloween supporters greatly outnumber the detractors. Hence their efforts to expand the festivities.
Among the fans are Tony and Stacey Zack. As they walked past the decorations this week, they pointed out how their relatives marveled at Conway’s transition to Halloween last year.
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“Halloween’s my favorite time of the year,” Stacey Zack said. “My parents live in Hartsville. … They were like, ‘We need to do this in Hartsville. We need to do this in Hartsville.’ They love it.”
For many supporters, the idea of Conway playing Halloween makes perfect sense.
Isn’t this the season to pretend to be something else?