Eat Drink and be Scary

22nd Annual Culinary Arts Fest will be happening next weekend with a theme of Eat, Drink and be Scary in a tip of the witch’s hat to Halloween. 

“We have a great lineup, for sure,” said Laurie Chase, the president of Glenwood Springs Art Council. “If you feel like dressing up, please do and come in costume. It will be fun.”

The event is put on by the Glenwood Springs Arts Council celebrating their 40th anniversary and the 22nd Culinary Arts Fest. The arts council is a nonprofit and a portion of proceeds will go to their scholarship program. 

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Entertainment for the night will be the Missing Link Band with local Bailey Barnum singing. 

“That whole group will be really fun to dance to,” said Chase. “So that’s an addition that we have this year is dancing, as well.”

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The dance floor will be set up in front of the fireplace in the Devereux Room at the Hotel Colorado. 

“There will be a discount for couples,” she said. “We’re trying to get it to be more of a date night.  So it’s going to be a complete date night with dinner, dancing, alcohol and a really fun silent auction.”

There will be a lot of great items from people in the community, including a couple of paintings from a couple of people up valley, Chase said. 

“Glenwood Springs Arts Council is a nonprofit gallery or nonprofit and we feature local and emerging artists, and it’s just part of our way of getting back to the community,” Chase said.” Our mission is to make arts available to everyone. So one of our big things is our scholarship program we have for kids five through 18.”

Ghost Walk to Linwood Cemetery

For more spooks, ghost tours to the Linwood Cemetery are happening this and next weekend. 

Grab some warm layers and leave the children who don’t care for history at home, while you take a spooky tour up to the old repository for famous and infamous characters from Glenwood Springs’ past. 

“You get such a mix, some of them are happy or at the very least entertaining, while others are quite sad,” Glenwood Spring Historical Society board member Clare Miller said. “And you wonder just really how hard it was to live in the American West at that time.”

There will be four tours each day they go out, rain, snow or shine, and tickets are selling quickly. 

The hike goes a quarter of a mile up to the Linwood Cemetery to tell the stories of the historical people laid to rest in the early days of settlement in Glenwood Springs. 

“We have some guides who take them up the hillside and guide them through the cemetery stopping at each grave as they go,” Miller said.

There will not be a ghost for Doc Holiday this year, but that doesn’t mean the ghost stories will be lacking. Some of the historical backstories this year will include the Schwartz family who originally owned the cemetery, Ed Hughes, Ida Alben, and Ella Seller.  

“I do try to make sure that they stop, especially at Doc Holliday’s grave because I’ve had people wander off tours to go looking for it,” Miller said. “I do make a note to have our tours stop down there to give people a chance to look around and take some photos and just kind of ask any questions of their guide if they have any.”

Ella Seller and her husband have a particularly sad story on the ghost walk, dying only a year after moving to Glenwood Springs.

Ida Alben is a loved ghost tale that helps to portray the different kinds of people who lived in Glenwood Springs during the early years. 

“She is up in Potter’s Field and she tells her own story as well as some of the stories of Potter’s Field,” she said. “Potter’s Field is where typically the people who were poor, children, unknowns; they  were the ones who were typically buried up there. It was the less affluent area, I guess I would say, of the cemetery.”

Tours are limited to 30 people and children under five are not recommended. Ghost stories are historical and will most likely not be appealing for young children. All proceeds for the event go to the Historical Society.