Halloween is hauntingly close and we’ve scared up some activities to celebrate, if you dare….

Pumpkin Fest – Oct. 18, 2-5 p.m., Tilly and Salvy’s Bacon Street Farm. Includes music, bounce houses, face painting, and about 20-30 local food vendors. Proceeds from pumpkin sales that day will be donated to Natick Public Schools.

Spooktacular – Oct. 24, noon-3 p.m., downtown Natick. Sponsored by the Recreation and Parks Department. Enjoy an afternoon of free fun events on the Common including music, balloon twisting and pumpkin painting. The costume parade to visit local businesses (and get in some early trick-or-treating) will take place from 2:15-3 p.m.

Jack O’Lantern Competition – Oct. 30, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., Eliot Church, South Natick.

At the libraries

Morse Institute Library

Teen & Tween: Halloween Perler Bead Magnets, Oct. 17, 3-4 p.m. 

For teens and tweens (ages 11-18), registration required. This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Morse Institute Library.

Haints, Haunts and Hollers: A Spooky Storytelling Adventure with Rona Leventhal, Oct. 19, 7-8 p.m. 

Join Rona for an evening of c-r-e-e-p-y stories. Will Jack survive the haunted house? What do you do with screams in the night? A skeleton that won’t die? A dead man in the road? Are YOU afraid of the Bell Witch? Or the Mujina? What does the dead man want from Mary Culhane? In this show you will find all manner of haints, dead folk, shape shifters and mysterious players. This program is best suited for families with children ages 5 and up. Drop in, no registration required.

Natick’s Oldest Burial Grounds: Gravestone Carvers and Their Symbols, Oct. 27, 7-8:15 p.m.

If you’ve driven past the South Natick Burial Ground or North Natick Cemetery without stopping, this talk is a reason to change that. Established in 1731 and 1744, these are the town’s two oldest burial grounds and hold gravestones cut by hand by carvers whose work can be identified and traced across eastern Massachusetts. 

We’ll look at who carved Natick’s earliest stones and at the symbolism they used — death’s heads, cherubs, urns, and willows — which was designed to be read and understood by anyone who passed by. Natick’s other cemeteries appear along the way, as a way of tracing how burial grounds evolved into cemeteries over three centuries. 

Registration for this event is suggested, but not required. Patrons who register will receive an event reminder and any updates about the event. Registration also helps organizers prepare ample seating.

For adults

Creativebug: Spooky Monoprints, Oct. 28, 3-4:30 p.m. Supplies are limited, and registration is required.

Join librarian Suzanne, for a brief overview of Creativebug. This resource has unlimited access to thousands of online art and craft classes, and it’s all free with your library card. Then, we’ll use Creativebug’s Spooky Monoprints course which will walk us through the very same process that Andy Warhol made famous using simple materials: a nib pen, acrylic ink, images to trace, and transparency film. Sponsored by the Friends of the Library.

Bacon Free Library

Harvest Pumpkin Party Concert, Oct. 9, 11 a.m.-noon

Join Elijah T. Grasshopper & Friends for a fun-filled Harvest Pumpkin Party Concert! Keep an eye on the library’s Facebook page for weather updates.

Virtual 

Even More Haunted Lighthouses of New England with Author Jeremy D’Entremont, Oct. 26, 7-8:15 p.m.

Registrants will receive a link to access the Zoom webinar via email. Lighthouses and ghost stories often seem to go hand in hand. In the past, Jeremy has discussed the lovelorn spirit known as Ernie at Connecticut’s New London Ledge Light and the piano-playing ghost of Maine’s Seguin Light, among others as well as about the mysterious Woman in White in the Isles of Shoals and the spirit of a drowned lighthouse keeper at Penfield Reef in Connecticut.