Families cuddled under blankets beneath the glow of a nearly full moon to hear ghost stories Friday night, part of a targeted effort by the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau to host more family-oriented events.

Titled "An Evening of Ghost Stories: Where the River Turns a Thousand Chilling Tales," the one-night event attracted nearly as many people as the first annual storytelling festival held over a weekend in April. An estimated 475 tickets were sold, and with children younger than 12 entering for free, organizers estimated 1,000 people were in attendance.

"Anything scary that goes bump in the night is fun," said Marla Mills, executive director of Old Town Cape, which helped with the event. Co-producers were Chuck Martin of the CVB and Dr. Joel Rhodes of Southeast.

People perched on lawn chairs at the banks of the Mississippi to hear two national storytellers. Luminarias lined the pathway on Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus, and a fog machine and green light set the mood.

The storytellers, Lyn Ford and Dan Keding, took turns weaving together details intended to chill, creep and intrigue, starting at sunset and continuing over two hours. As the evening progressed, the stories were intended to grow more frightening.

Keding went first, telling how ghost stories have been passed down to him through the generations, particularly through his grandmother. She would place garlic and a rosary in his childhood room as a "precaution," he said, joking that he would go to bed so frightened he was "the only kid I knew who could sleep with their eyes open."

He told stories about haunted buildings, decoding messages from ghosts and about a ghost dog who rescues children on Halloween.

Ford followed, growing animated and talking in a quick, raspy voice. Frequently trusting her hands or using motions for emphasis, she created different voices for her characters and imitated the sounds of creaking steps or a knock on the door. Occasionally she would pause dramatically before launching back into her tale, asking for audience participation along the way.

A crowd favorite, mostly for its humor, was a story about a group of siblings who approach a "haunted" house on Halloween. While an older brother and sister are individually spooked by a ghost family inside, it is the younger sister who has her mother help the "little boo baby in the big fat diaper," for which she is rewarded by candy falling from the sky.

The family discovers they have more reason to "be afraid of a dirty diaper than boo people," Ford concluded to a roaring audience.

Rhodes said the event could become a yearly tradition.

lbavolek@semissourian.com

388-3627

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