Cooper Hall was on fire with the Halloween spirit last night as ghostly goblins and Jedi knights ran amuck in search of candy and someone to scare.

Every year the Cooper Hall staff, along with the help of the hall’s residents and the UTM Housing department, put together a huge Halloween Carnival for the local children. The carnival began last night around 6 p.m. and lasted for over two hours.

The carnival gives local parents an opportunity to take their children out to trick-or-treat and without having to worry about their safety.

Many of the suites in Cooper handed out candy and all different sorts of treats to the children.

There was such a wide variety of costumes this year. The children were decked out in all sorts of outfits. There were ghosts, knights, princesses and even ninja turtles.

Inside the lobby were a wide variety of games for the children to play and win even more candy and refreshments for them and their parents.

Along with the festivities were competitions among the hall residents for the best decorated suite doors. The two suites that tied for the winning prize were suites 3C and 3F.

Suite 3C had a very vivid and artistic display of the well-known children’s Halloween-Christmas movie, The Nightmare before Christmas.

Suite 3F decorated their door with a haunting portrait of Freddy and Jason from the recent horror movie, Freddy versus Jason. Both suites tied for first place, and this was a very hard decision in my opinion. The artists did such a fabulous job on the painting.

Suite 3C will be keeping their decorations up until after the Christmas season since their theme works throughout the holiday season.

Outside many of the suites in Cooper were scary spooks and haunting goblins that tried to scare the children, although not too many of the kids were afraid. The children wouldn't let anything get in the way of them and their candy. I do commend the bravery of the kids, even I was too scared to knock on the door of suite 2A in fear of getting chased by the Grim Reaper.

There were over 150 children, not including their parents that showed up for the festivities at Cooper, making this year’s carnival one of the best ever.

The staff and residents did an excellent job coordinating the carnival and getting everything together.