There may be nothing ever again on the scale of the Halloween spectacle in Lahaina.

The sometimes off-again, on-again Lahaina Keiki Halloween Parade and nighttime adult celebration won’t be held following the devastating Aug. 8 wildfires that all but destroyed historic Lahaina town, amid uncertainty whether last year’s parade will be its last.

“Now, it just wouldn’t be right, especially for the kids,” said Sne Patel, president of the LahainaTown Action Committee, which had been organizing both the parade and nighttime Halloween celebrations.

“We don’t foresee those changing — who knows how long?” Patel said.

Before the town was destroyed, Halloween in Lahaina drew 25,000 to 30,000 people from as far away as Canada during Hawaii’s traditionally slow “shoulder season” for tourism, creating an economic kick-start to the fourth quarter of the year for West Maui businesses.

Halloween night alone generated “easily from $3 (million) to $5 million just for the Front Street area,” Patel said.

Bartenders and waiters would earn so much money in tips that “they made their rent that night,” he said.

The sometimes raucous Front Street party that typically followed the family friendly, daytime children’s parades gave Lahaina’s Halloween celebration the ignoble nickname “Mardi Gras of the Pacific,” and had been shut down in some years by Maui County and the Maui Police Department.

And three months after at least 99 people were killed in the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century, it’s far too soon to hold any celebrations in Lahaina, said Joe Pluta, president of the West Maui Improvement Association who served as master of ceremonies for all but one of the 44 parades.

“This year we’re definitely not going to have it,” Pluta said. “There’s a whole level of sadness that’s never been felt before. And we cannot disrespect all of the dead people by parading down Front Street. There’s no way we can do it. You cannot have a parade in a graveyard. It’s nothing but a path of destruction now. It would certainly not be welcomed by anyone in the community.”

The LahainaTown Action Committee, which advocates for Lahaina businesses, convinced police and the county to reinstate the parade and nighttime festivities in 1990.

“At the time, there needed to be structure and organization because it had roots of not being the most safe,” Patel said.

Then Patel took over 10 years ago and began working to further improve the reputation of Lahaina’s Halloween celebration.

“It was getting out of hand to where the community wanted to see some changes,” Patel said. “The current group of us — over the last 10 years — wanted to get away from that stigma of the ‘Mardi Gras of the Pacific’ and getting back to keiki and family and bringing in artistic talent. We really worked with the community as a whole to make sure they came down and had fun. … But don’t be a knucklehead.”

The event cost $70,000 to $80,000 each year and required as many as 100 Maui police officers, Patel said.

Before COVID-19, the LahainaTown committee had 110 members, mostly on Front Street, including 14 restaurants and bars. It worked with the general managers to agree to turn down music as Halloween night wore on and not over serve customers — while meeting with Maui police and fire officials and the liquor commission.

Then the pandemic hit in 2020 and the parade and party shut down again, for two years. Only the daytime keiki parade returned in 2022, for the 44th parade.

This Halloween, only verified residents with vehicle passes can get into limited parts of Lahaina to view what’s left of their properties.

Some West Maui businesses have already held and are planning much smaller Halloween events focused on children and families, such as the Ka‘anapali Beach Resort Association’s Family Fun Halloween Bash at Whalers Village on Halloween.

Leo Durand lived in Lahaina for 53 years and worked at the Lahaina Fish Company on Front Street “so I was there for a lot of Halloweens,” he said. “For a lot of businesses, that was their moneymaker.

“The locals had been doing it for years and then it grew and grew and grew. … It was a huge event,” Durand said.

People would sometimes work on their costumes for a year for contests in bars and restaurants — and especially for $1,000 in prize money to the winner of the big, sanctioned contest, he said.

Drinking and partying in costumes provided “a sense of freedom for adults,” Durand said. “You would get a few drunks, a few rowdies, but the cops would be around and they would handle that kind of stuff. Tourists were shuttled in from the hotels. People would fly here and plan to be here just for Halloween.”

It always began with hundreds of kids in costumes walking down Front Street, led by the Lahainaluna High School Marching Band.

Most years the parade included Maui Shriners in tiny vehicles, firetrucks and Maui’s mayor.

Last year the parade started at the Outlets of Maui and ended at Campbell Park across from the Lahaina Public Library, just over a half-mile away.

It included vehicles from the Maui Classic Cruisers club. Then-Mayor Michael Victorino served as grand marshal, just before losing reelection to a second term weeks later.

In previous years after the parade, the party began.

For seven years in a row a group of Lahaina friends called the Front Street Gang dominated the main costume contest.

“We were the Keystone Cops one year and we rigged a wheelbarrow to look like an old cop car and we gave out 350 Groucho glasses with noses,” said the group’s leader, Bunt Burkhalter. “And we also gave out citations for ‘decent exposure.’ For days those Groucho glasses and noses showed up in restaurants along Front Street. The best one we did, hands down, was ‘The Last Supper.’”

The backdrop was 12 feet tall and the table for supper was 15 feet long. Burkhalter portrayed artist Leonardo da Vinci creating the painting, complaining to the audience about the models in an affected Italian accent.

Another year, the group re-created Mount Rushmore.

“I was Roosevelt and my wife was Jefferson and my son was George Washington,” Burkhalter said.

Penny Wakida portrayed a park ranger “and as we walk off stage to applause, we’re all wearing those false plastic butts with the cracks and Penny said to the audience, ‘You realize these are getting old and this one is developing cracks,’” Burk­halter said.

The group donated all of its prize money each year to the Maui Academy of Performing Arts.

Wakida remembered past Halloween nights happily.

“They were really exciting times with a lot of group camaraderie,” she said. “They’re all sort of behind us for a while.”

Her husband, Clyde Wakida, 74, died in the wildfire.

“I lost my home and I lost my husband,” she said.

Burkhalter and his wife, Ann, also lost their home and plan to move to Colorado on Dec. 1 to be close to their daughter and grandchildren.

At the age of 84, Burkhalter said he’s too old to wait for Lahaina to be rebuilt, whenever that is.

Asked if the Halloween night in Lahaina that he loved so much will ever happen again, Burkhalter said, “I honestly don’t know.”

———

Staff writer Andrew Gomes contributed to this report.