The Animalia Halloween Exposition, or AHE as it had come to be known, turned out to be even bigger than anyone, let alone Animalia, anticipated. During the Potluck Meet-and-Greet, the announcement for the plan for Halloween was released to the public. The very next day, Clara checked the webgroup she had created for Animalia and found a lot of offers to help with the AHE, as they would soon call it, including some from people that she didn't know existed.
The Nevada Institute of Technology wanted to convert Animalia into Spookyville for all ages, and to do so by using their skill in technology. In particular, they wanted to turn Lovers' Woods (the government lauded her for creative problem solving in dealing with Animalian heat that led to its creation) into Sleepy Hollow, the Animalia Great Hall into a Mad Scientist/Vampire Lord's castle known as Franken Castle, and to turn the nearly finished Worldmeet Glade hotel and casino into a haunted hotel. After getting the concepts explained to her, Clara gave them the okay for it.
Ripley's Believe It or Not contributed by having several horror-themed objects from their collection put on display. While morbidly fascinated by some of them, Clara was somewhat saddened at some of the torture devices shown, because some of them made her feel even worse about humans who would use them on fellow humans.
There were also some professional, and not-so-professional, special effects make-up artists who offered to make some real "monsters" for the Extravaganza, as well as demonstrate how such effects were made, both to the Animalians and to humans who were interested.
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The AHE, all in all, was a great success. Little kids got to do some trick-or-treating, while more mature ones got to see things they wouldn't otherwise see. In "Sleepy Hollow", there was an encounter with a raven, a toad, and a black cat Animalians who were posing as Shakespear-style witches and did the famous black magic ritual from Macbeth; there also was an "encounter" with the famous Headless Horseman, who would chase people to Franken Castle.
In Franken Castle, there would be encounters with both Dracula, the Wolf-man, and Frankenstein's monster. Children would get to play in the Mad Scientist's Lab, mixing up "adverse mixtures" when they were really mixing different flavors of Kool-aid. In the Linda Vista hotel, as the Worldmeet Glade hotel was temporarily converted to, there were encounters of all kinds, from a skeleton pirate defending his loot, to a haunted, upside down room.
The highlight of the evening was in the performance hall, where there was an Animalian interpretation and performance of A Night on Bald Mountain. The part of Satan in the performance was played by a Romanian Geoffroy's Bat Animalian. He was competing in the IAC middleweight bodybuilding competition, but he also showed that the wings-on-shoulders-and-human-arms weren't limited to just the bird Animalians who could fly.
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On All Saints Day, there was a display of religions from around the world. Among the things to do were models and dioramas of famous religious buildings, such as Angkor Wat, Haifa Sophia, and Norte Dame among others. There was also some reenactors who displayed the conflict between particular religions, Christianity and Islam in particular. While it helped the Animalians learn more about why certain Animalians had certain names, it also saddened them to learn about another way humans divide themselves.
On All Souls Day, there were displays on cultures that had a special relationship with death. Among those were the Ancient Egyptian, Aztec, and Mayan cultures. The highlight of that day was a Mexican celebration of Las Dias de los Muertos. It was during this event that the scientists studying the virus made an announcement. They said that, while they still need more data before the Limb Regeneration phase of Project Phoenix, they were now at the point where they could test the virus as an obesity cure, and were looking for volunteers.
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All in all it was a great success, and it was decided to have it as an Annual Event