"We don't know what the beast is," Bladen County Commissioner Charles Ray Peterson told the Bladen Journal after the 2024 festival. "But everybody came. The New York Times, hunters, and people from all over the world were here. Nobody got it. But, we as a community were looking for something to grow our community, so we created the 'Beast Festival.'"
The festival takes place on the last weekend of October. In 2026 that weekend is Friday, October 30, and Saturday, October 31, which puts the biggest day of Bladenboro's year on Halloween. The Bladen County community calendar also lists more Bladenboro events in the days before it. For a town of about 1,600 people, this year's Beast Fest fills the whole week.
Seven Days on One Calendar
Here is how the last week of October looks on the Bladen County community calendar as of early October 2026:
- Sunday, Oct. 25: Beast Fest Revival, Downtown Bladenboro, 6 to 7:30 p.m.
- Monday, Oct. 26 through Wednesday, Oct. 28: Beast Fest Revival continues downtown at 7 p.m. The listing runs through 8 p.m. Wednesday.
- Thursday, Oct. 29: Bladenboro Trick or Treat, 5 to 6:30 p.m.
- Friday, Oct. 30: Beast Fest opens downtown.
- Saturday, Oct. 31: Beast Fest runs all day.
The calendar doesn't say who hosts the Revival or what each evening involves. Past coverage shows that worship has been part of the festival before. In 2024 the lineup included bands, dancers, karate, cheerleaders, worship, a Halloween costume contest and DJs. The Thursday trick-or-treat listing doesn't give a location or a host either.
Last year the town's Halloween and Beast Fest fell on different weekends. The 2025 festival ran October 24 and 25, a full week before Halloween. This year Halloween is the festival's main day. The only trick-or-treat time on the county calendar is Thursday, two days before Halloween.
Bladenboro isn't the only option that Saturday. The county calendar also lists an Annual Community Day Event at 702 Martin Luther King Drive in Elizabethtown, from noon to 10 p.m. on October 31.
The weekend itself, and why the hours don't match
Boost the Boro's 2026 schedule lists Friday from 4 to 10 p.m., with The Tonez playing at 6. Saturday runs from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The grand opening is at 10, followed by a community showcase at 10:30, Rob Cole at 2 p.m., and the Swingin' Medallions headlining at 6.
The county calendar lists shorter hours for the same weekend: Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Boost the Boro runs the festival, so its schedule is the one to trust for set times. If you're planning a Friday evening around the opening, check with the organizer first, because the two listings are two hours apart on the start time.
The lineup is all new compared with last year, when Thomas Road Band played Friday and The Catalinas played Saturday. In 2025 the festival also held a 4 p.m. costume contest on Saturday and added a classic car show at the four corners for the first time. Neither appears on the 2026 schedule published so far. Contest entrants and car owners should confirm before they make plans.
A Festival Built Out of a Bad Winter
The festival grew out of a search for a reason to visit. Rebecca Hester, a pharmacist at The Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy, told the Bladen Journal that Boost the Boro was looking for creative ways to bring people to Bladenboro when the late Hiram Hester was its president. "The only thing that they had really been famous for, was back in the '50s," she said.
The original story is better documented than most local legends. A 2006 StarNews retrospective, drawing on newspaper reports from the time, says the stories began on January 4, 1954, after three dogs were found dead with their skulls crushed and chewed. Police Chief Roy Fores led an early search. On January 5 he described the animal's "vampire aspect" after a dog was reportedly found with almost no blood left in it. On January 6, Mrs. C.E. Kinlaw reported seeing the creature near her porch. Her husband, Charles Kinlaw, went out armed and found catlike prints.
By then hunters were searching the swamp. Mayor W.G. Fussell stopped a proposed baiting plan over safety concerns. A bobcat was trapped and killed on January 13, but that didn't settle whether it was the animal behind the killings. Boost the Boro's own retelling says more than 700 hunters and trappers came to town. Witnesses described a catlike creature between 4 and 5 feet long.
The Beast of Bladenboro Legends & Lore marker stands at 103 S. Main Street. It is on the festival grounds and easy to find before the Saturday crowd arrives.
How a Town of 1,600 Hosts Ten Thousand
The crowd estimates are large next to the town's population. Boost the Boro's own conservative figure puts Friday night and all day Saturday at about 8,000 people. Peterson estimated 10,000 to 15,000 visitors in 2024. Before the 2025 festival, the owners of Aunt B's Country Kitchen were planning for about 10,000. Even the lowest of those numbers is about five times the town's population.
Admission is free, and that depends on local money. Boost the Boro says business and personal sponsorships pay for the festival, which lets it offer almost every event and activity at no cost. All profits go back into the community to support projects for residents and small businesses. For 2026, sponsorships were due October 1.
Planning starts long before October. Hester told the Bladen Journal that the committee takes a break until after Christmas, then meets once a month until the next October, when it starts meeting weekly. Organizer Claudette Guy said she had more than 100 craft vendors and 13 food vendors in 2024 and had to add space to the craft area. "I think the biggest challenge for this large of an event is just getting the people where they need to be," she said.
Parking is where you notice it most. In 2024 some visitors parked up to a mile away and walked in. The same coverage mentions tours of the rebuilt downtown and rides on a horse-drawn wagon. If you live within walking distance, leaving the car at home is the easy choice.
Two things on the roads are different from past festivals. NCDOT awarded BMCO Construction a $2 million contract to replace the traffic signal at N.C. 131/410 and N.C. 211 with a roundabout, with completion expected the following summer. In October 2025, WECT reported that crews would remove the signal starting October 29 and set up a circular traffic pattern with cones and drums while construction continued. We could not confirm whether the roundabout is finished as of this month. If you're driving in on 211 for the first time since last fall, expect the intersection to look different. This is also the first Beast Fest since Justin Hewett was sworn in as Bladenboro's police chief on July 29, in a ceremony led by Mayor David Hales.
The Downtown Behind the Booths
The festival sits in front of a downtown that has been rebuilt over the past few years. Bladenboro's 13,000-square-foot Town Square business center opened off Main Street on March 1, 2024, built above the floodplain. Peterson told the Bladen Journal he would love to show off "our new downtown." These are the stops our research found, with the most recent dates each was reported open:
- Aunt B's Country Kitchen, 131 Main Street. Owned by Bridget and Shannon Todd, who started with a hot dog cart before opening the restaurant. During the 2025 festival they ran the cart at the event and kept the restaurant open late, until 10 p.m. Saturday.
- Market on Main, 109 S. Main Street. A gift, clothing, furniture and home-decor shop that opened in 2021 and had grown into three Main Street buildings by March 2025. Hours that spring were 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Wednesdays and Sundays.
- Things I Love Boutique, 125 S. Main Street, Suite D, in Town Square. Open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., as of an April 2025 profile.
- Sweet Tea Boutique in Town Square. Owned by Katie Thompson and one of the businesses North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall visited in July 2025.
- Ricky DD's Party Entertainment, 110 W. Seaboard Street. Character entertainment, party decorations and a small event space. It celebrated its grand opening in February 2025.
These details come from 2025 reporting, so call ahead to confirm festival-weekend hours.
The menu at Aunt B's shows how a local business works with the festival. In 2025 the Todds introduced the Beast Burger at Beast Fest: an 8-ounce beef patty topped with 5 ounces of barbecued pork, three strips of bacon, homemade crispy-fried onions and Shannon Todd's barbecue sauce. "It's so big, we have to stick a knife down through it to hold it together," he said. They also made a chipotle dragon fruit wing sauce available only for the festival. They tried a mobile waitress who took orders in the crowd and sent them to the kitchen. And they gave a coupon for funnel cake fries to anyone who brought a boxed toy for their Christmas Eve community dinner. We haven't found a 2026 version of those plans yet.
The children's part of the festival has been a downtown tradition too. In 2024, the Hesters from New Light Church saw hundreds of kids come through their annual downtown Trunk & Treat at Beast Fest. With the festival on Halloween this year, families have two dates to plan around: Thursday's trick-or-treat from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and the festival on Saturday, October 31.
At Tatum Real Estate, we've worked in Bladen County long enough to know that Beast Fest weekend is when Bladenboro is busiest. If you have questions about the town, or about property near the Main Street festival area, talk to a local agent today. We're glad to help, and we can usually recommend a parking spot too.
