Costumes, candy and community

Tuesday, November 11, 2025

From family-friendly to frightfully fun, Penn College celebrated Halloween with several events, many of them longstanding traditions. The festivities started with Dining Services’ Goblins Breakfast and Halloween Boofet and encompassed the American Welding Society’s Arc Asylum (a haunted house in the Lycoming Engines Metal Trades Center), trick-or-treating at The Village housing complex and the Community Arts Center, and a Halloween parade by the Children’s Learning Center that featured a stop in the Davie Jane Gilmour Center for treats offered by various offices housed in the center. To cap it off, the college’s Alpha Chi chapter hosted a Fright Night 5K Walk/Run on Nov. 5 to raise funds to offset new inductees’ national chapter fees.

Halloween Boofet

photos by Rob Hinkal, social media specialist

Using tongs, a Dining Services employee adds bologna slices to a buffet station that has a plastic skeleton lying in the center.

Spinach dip spills from the mouth of a jack-o'-lantern into a bowl.

Orange rice irispies treats decorated like jack-o'-lanterns and green rice krispies treats decorated like mummies.

Trick-or-Treat on Third Street

photos by Anna E. Reed, photographer (student)

In another annual tradition, residents of The Village treated the children of Penn College students and employees to a night of games, crafts and candy.

Families line up along West Third Street in anticipation of the trick-or-treat fun.

A child in a pop star costume is joined by three adults.

Students sitting outside their apartment door. One, dressed in a Shrek costume, gives candy to a child. The child is dressed in a football costume.

A student sits outside his apartment door with a bag of candy. He is earing a crusader costume.

A student wearing face paint holds a handful of candy up to the camera.

A mom with three children in costume. Two are dressed as dinosaurs, and one is dressed as Harry Potter.

Children, wearing a firefighter costume and a chicken costume, approach a student and her dog, who are sitting outside their apartment door with a large bag of candy.

Two adults are joined by three children. The children are wearing a firefighter costume, a Paw Patrol costume and a chicken costume.

Two students stand together wearing bee costumes.

A couple with two children: one, being held by her mother, is in a chick costume, and the other is in a dinosaur costume.

Downtown Halloween Trick-or-Treat & Fall Festival

photos by Steven M. Ault, manager of marketing communications for the Journey Bank Community Arts Center

Eight brothers from Penn College’s Sigma Pi chapter lent a hand to the Journey Bank Community Arts Center staff in handing out candy to children who attended the community event, sponsored by the Williamsport Business Association, the city's Recreation Department and Horizon Federal Credit Union. They handed out over 1,300 pieces of candy, donated by both the Arts Center and the fraternity.

Students, all wearing costumes - including the Wildcat mascot costume - line up for a photo outside of the Journey Bank Community Arts Center.

Sigma Pi brothers, from left: Zachary C. Cavaliere, of Concord, Mass., residential construction technology & management; Francesco E. Tomas, of Wilton, Conn., Bachelor of Architecture; Joe M. Pillsbury, of Point Pleasant, N.J., building construction technology; AJ Zerrenner, of Doylestown, building construction technology, concrete science technology, and residential construction technology & management; Michael J. Dinapoli, of Trafford, electrical construction and residential construction technology & management; Dante M. Lo Sasso, of Drexel Hill, construction management; John A. Papaianni, of Edison, N.J., building construction technology and residential construction technology & management; and Mason Smith, of Pennsburg, construction management.

The Wildcat mascot gives a high five to a child dressed in a Spiderman costume.

Twighlight falls as children in costume and their families walk in various directions on West Fourth Street outside the Journey Bank Community Arts Center.

The Wildcat mascot stands next to a child in a Sonic the Hedgehog costume. Behind them is the Journey Bank Community Arts Center.

Dunham Children’s Learning Center parade

photos by Alexandra Butler, photographer/photo editor

A woman holds a bowl of candy. A preschool-aged child in a camouflage costume looks at the woman as he reaches into the bowl.

A toddler laughs at a Halloween decoration.

A group of preschool children wearing purple clothes and handmade purple construction paper headbands responds to an adult's question with smiles and raised hands.

A group of ver small children wearing handmade headbands with apples on them walks through the Davie Jane Gilmour Center.

A child's hand reaches for candy laid out on a table.

Adults wearing Minnie Mouse ears gathers behind a table decorated for Halloween.

A group of employees has their photo taken in front of the Penn College Admissions Office. One is earing a costume.

Adults in costumes are dressed as The Cat in the Hat, Elmo, Ernie and Cookie Monster.

Men and women in animal costumes: a lion, a horse, a cow, a bear, a pig, a walrus and a rabbit.

Fright Night 5K

photos by Alexandra Butler, photographer/photo editor

Alpha Chi raised $3,700 in a costumed 5K that started and ended at the Field House, with a route that explored campus after dark. Alpha Chi is a national honor society open to bachelor’s degree students in any major and limited to the top 10% of an institution’s junior and senior classes.