Sac Zombie Club bring the giant zombies. Actors on stilts, roughly eight feet of them, moving through Community Park all afternoon.
Here is the part nobody warns you about. You are queueing for a churro, you notice something tall in the corner of your eye, and then it runs at you. They are not slow. Being chased across a park by a sprinting zombie twice your height is a very particular feeling and it turns grown adults into shrieking children in about half a second. Small children have opinions about them. So do some adults.
They are also completely aware of what they are doing. Watch them work a crowd: they read who wants to be terrified and who wants a photograph, and they never get it wrong. The little ones who are not sure get a wave and a slow bow. Everybody else gets the run.
Who they are
Sac Zombie Club are a volunteer outfit out of Sacramento whose stated aim is, in their own words, to be weird and throw strange events. They put on the Lodi Zombie Walk and Halloween Faire, the longest-running family Halloween attraction in Northern California, and they turn up at zombie walks across the region. Their line is that anyone can be a zombie.
They have been at most of our festivals, they come to the afterparties too, and they are a real part of why this thing has grown. A festival with a few people in costume is a nice afternoon. A festival with professionals who will chase your children across a field is an event people drive to Davis for.
