Frank Speziale photo

NORWICH – After two decades of offering a weekend of free, Halloween-themed fun in the City of Norwich every October, the 20th annual Norwich Pumpkin Festival on Friday and Saturday, October 27 and 28 will be the last––unless another organization steps up and takes the reins.

Pumpkin Festival Coordinator Tyler Oliver said, "I don't want to say that this is the last Pumpkin Fest. It's kind of just, as we've known it, it's wrapping up."

The current committee that has organized the festival every year since its inception has decided this year will be its last, Oliver said, because of the endless planning required for the event coupled with the fact that former volunteers have aged out and younger people have failed to fill in the blanks.

"I think people in the community have always kind of just come to expect that [the Pumpkin Festival] is going to always be there, not necessarily knowing there's a small group of people behind it putting the whole thing on," said Oliver.

"And that goes with actually any event locally. You've got a lot of people who put in a lot of time and energy who are on the other end of the aging and are going to get tired," continued Oliver. "So there's some young people in the community that really need to start stepping up, I think, to help that stuff out."