The Emma Crawford 2014 Coffin Races

Return with me now to the hauntingly haunted streets of Manitou Springs, Colorado for the 20th Annual Emma Crawford Coffin Races. And was it a good one this year. Perfect weather. Perfect.

Oh god, look at the crowd. There was an expected attendance of 12,000 or more. When I left (which was, admittedly, before the actual races got underway) there were cars stretched out for miles still trying to get in.

The event itself had over 70 entries. And never has the race had so many great costumes and elaborate race coffins.

There is always a pirate team. Sorry I don't know more about the various clubs and businesses that compose the races. This could be a law firm for all I know, the scurvy dogs. R!

These are the Veterans of the Al Packer Wars, or something. Whatever, it's just good to see Uncle Al represented.  The coffin rider (Emma Crawford) was a little kid in a stew pot.

Figured these guys would be cranking "Flight of the Valkyries" but nope.

These folks were very sporting. They're zom-bees. Get it?

LOL! DO U EVEN LIFT, BRO?

ONE OF US, ONE OF US! GOOBLE GOBBLE GOOBLE GOBBLE!

The Road Warrior/Beyond Thunderdome team might have been the most epic. But it's hard to get a picture of people when you are being crushed up against them. This is only like a third of the team.

I wish I could have gotten pictures of just one percent of the costumes. At this rate, the Emma Crawford Festival is destined be a contender for the greatest Halloween event in the country.

Yep. Coffin Races. Pretty much.

I tried to take a selfie and the sun exploded. I hate when that happens....

Manitou Springs, the Halloween Capitol of the Rockies.


There are many great pictures of the festivities at the Emma Crawford Coffin Races Facebook.

Emma Crawford Coffin Races 2013 Video

Here's a great video from Fest 300 giving some background for the coffin races and featuring highlights from the 2013 races.

Emma Crawford Coffin Races (part 1)

(no, this is not a picture of me. there are no pictures of me)

Okay, that could have gone better for me. I forgot my shades in my car. I forgot to recharge my actual camera before I left, forcing me to take most of the pictures with my phone. It was the most crowded day in the Coffin Races' 19 years. I may have been the only person, out of 8,000+ attendees, who was there by himself. And my heart just wasn't in it. On the plus side, the weather was nice, the PA was loud and clear (the Halloween music really boosted the event) and nothing of an actual disastrous nature took place. But, jeez, it was crowded. Just like the last time I went, I fled town when the actual races had barely gotten underway.

Anyway, it's the parade that gives you the real photo-ops. The coffin race teams all file past the crowd with their "coffins", which are actually carts with one passenger, intended to represent Emma Crawford in her coffin (it's a long story). Unfortunately, it's hard to get good pictures even during the parade due to people walking in front of your camera, team members looking in the other direction (a lot of those, as I found when I actually got home and went through the pictures), less than optimal lighting and whatever you call that phenomenon whereby subjects that look like they'll make great photographs somehow don't.

This was a nice concept, The Yellow Submarine, Paul, Ringo and a grim reaper carrying the tombstones of John and George. Seems a hair less macabre than the average team but whatever. Let It Be. At one point, the PA was playing Maxwells Silver Hammer, with a lot of the hippie crowd singing along.

Normally the hearses are the main part of the parade but the hearse clubs were all on strike for some reason. The scab hearses get an A for effort but there weren't many of them.

If there were a dozen of me with cameras I couldn't have captured a tenth of the interesting things at the parade. It's worth doing an internet picture search for. I'll do one more post with my pics from this year but, until then, why not peruse my vastly superior 2009 Coffin Race (parade) pictures:

Hearse Looking At You, Kid

Off-ed to the Races

More Coffin Races Pictures

More Coffin Races Pics

Off-ed to the Races!

No the people of Manitou Springs, Colorado aren't a bunch of chanting and gibbering deformed idol-worshipping savages out of a Lovecraft story, they just really know how to celebrate Halloween. And their Halloween spirit shines the brightest during the Emma Crawford Coffin Races, held every year the Saturday before Halloween. This years event, the 15th annual ECCR, had the fortune of falling on one of the warmest sunniest day of the month.

Emma Crawford was a lovely young woman, afflicted with tubeculosis, whose family moved to Manitou in 1889 to provide her with the believed restorative powers of the local mineral springs and mountain air. Emma asked to be buried on nearby Red Mountain and when she died, in 1891, her family had the wish fulfilled. Unfortunately, Emma's body was relocated years later by the railroad to the south side of Red Mountain where the heightened exposure to the elements caused Emma coffin to become unearthed and wash down the mountainside in 1929. Emma's poor abused bones were re-interred in a cemetery in an unmarked grave and rumor has it that Emma's ghost haunts the slopes of Red Mountain looking for her lost resting place.

So I trust you get the basic premise. Every year the folks of Manitou pay tribute to Emma's spirit with a racing competition where colorfully-costumed teams push coffin-like carts ( two at a time) to the finish line, each bearing a unique representation of the restless Miss Crawford.

Each year there is an invitation only wake at the Miramont Castle the evening before the race and the next day the public event begins with a parade in Emma honor featuring a convoy of pimped-out hearses as well as the race competitors themselves.

It's basically a Halloween event, with dazzling costumes on both sides of the parade-tape.

Prizes are given for originality of the teams costumes and coffins as well as the actual races.

The event gives Halloween exhibitionists a perfect place to flaunt their nature, such as... What's this?...

What's bugging those dogs? Some kind of remote-controlled car?

Oh, but of course...

The fact is, there were so darned many people packed onto Manitou Avenue that I gave up trying to get good shots of the races themselves. But I knew someone would have video up on YouTube by the time I wrote this post, anyway.

More Coffin Race Pics

Hearse Looking at You, Kid!

In the last episode our search for Halloween Evil brought us to a macabre gathering of the strange denizens of Manitou Springs, Colorado, no doubt preparing for a lurid fire-lit ritualistic ceremony of naked dancing, blood sacrifices and cannibalism. The street has been cleared for the arrival of God knows what ranks and machinations of eldritch horror...

ACHTUNG! The Horrible Mohawk Halloween Regime has assumed control!

YOU THERE!-make an extreme jack-o-lantern that belches fire and smoke! YOU!-paint your little sister's face to look like a kitty cat! YOU!-think of strange new uses for candy corn! ZEIG HALLOW!

Need a ride, mortal? The kid in everyone loves hearses. Black hearses, white hearses, um, gray hearses... Big hearses, sm-.... Errr.... Hearses!

How about a hearse that will Monster Mash your ass if you you don't like the color pink?

This ambulance is nice but a little too pristine to be scary. Unless it's like a Christine ambulance, or something. Hey, wait a minute.... If I survive this I've got a great idea for a shameless rip-off book to write!

Woah! That Fascist babe is totally checking me out. She looks like Patty Hearse-t.

No, no. I've got to focus!

These people should have checked gramma's pulse before putting her on the roof. And that's good advice for anyone. Even-... Wait! Is that Zombie Tom Arnold?

Who ya gonna call? I'm gonna call that girl, I was just asking who you gonna call?

Hey you damn kids! Quit playing with the corpse! How's daddy supposed to make it in the hearsin' business if you keep messin' 'em up?

I guess what I'm trying to say is...hearses.

Especially this one.

Oh dear Lord! Now what?....

Off-ed to the Races!