Aliens attack!: Extraterrestrial theme invades Nightmare on Chicago Street in Elgin
As if zombies weren’t enough to worry about, downtown Elgin was the scene of an extraterrestrial invasion Saturday night during the annual Nightmare on Chicago Street.
The 13th iteration of the Halloween fright festival featured thousands of revelers in the streets of the downtown Elgin “safe zone,” while hundreds of performers, including zombie and alien actors, musicians and dancers, lurched along streets and entertained on multiple stages.
This year’s alien invasion theme was premised on extraterrestrials using televisions and lost VHS tapes to unleash horror on the earthlings.
Juan Pietras of Rockford was at his fourth Nightmare and was happy to see a thinner crowd early in the night than in years past.
“It’s always a good time,” he said while he sipped a drink and watched the crowd on South Grove Avenue. “Being able to walk around and see all the costumes is the best.”
Juan and his friends paid for VIP tickets, which allowed them early entrance and early food and drink before the crowds showed up after 8 p.m.
The sprawling event area included three stages with music, including performances on the main stage by 12-piece brass/funk band My Son the Hurricane, 1990s throwback band Nerdvana, alt-punk band Take the Reins and DJ Cold.
The Plaza Stage featured the Afro-Latin grooves and punk-rock energy of La Misa as well as Chicago’s Future Nobodies, Latin-based DJ JTC and hard core/ska band La Pobreska.
Select businesses within the safe zone were open and offering food and specialty drinks. The event also featured four themed pop-up bars for guests with all-access tickets, with settings that included a forgotten video store, a secret science-fiction facility, an Aztec underworld and a mad scientist’s mansion.
Seven “street experiences” included themes of “First Contact,” “Plaza Mictlán,” “Safe Zone,” “Cirq D' Freak,” “Kingdom of Plantae,” “Thunder-Dome: Welcome to the Blood Lands,” and “Svengoolie’s B-movie Boulevard,” which included a meet-and-scream with Svengoolie himself.
Dozens of vendors lined the streets, selling food, drinks and merchandise, while Bizarre Bazaar, a haunted marketplace, offered creepy crafts, trinkets, occult oddities and more.