Visitors Have a Creepy Time at Halloweekend : Ventura: The three-day event at San Buenaventura State Beach is intended to raise money for the city’s youth and recreation programs.

An eerie fog smothered the midway and nocturnal animals crept among the crowds. At noon, a great horned owl swiveled its neck. Creepy lizards startled the children. And Frankenstein and his bride marched, stiff-legged, toward a teen-age devil and a boy dressed as a clown.

Four days early, Ventura celebrated Halloween.

Halloweekend, a three-day event that some revelers compared to the county fair, drew about 5,500 people Saturday afternoon. Organizers hoped that by Sunday night as many as 20,000 people will have visited San Buenaventura State Beach, said Stephen Hartmann, a spokesman for the city Parks and Recreation Department.

The entertainment-filled event will help raise money for the department’s youth and recreation programs. The city hopes to pocket about $20,000, he said.

Hartmann said organizers tried to choose a variety of entertainers and fewer crafts booths.

“We couldn’t have planned it better,” he said of the fog. “It’s kind of a little shrouded Halloween effect.”

Some of the displays, although not always intentionally, agreed with the holiday mood. People squealed, for example, at the snakes and opossum displayed by Moorpark College’s Teaching Zoo.

“Most people are afraid of reptiles,” said student Colleen Dougherty. “They’re sort of spooky, eerie.”

A squirrel monkey, its eyes sunken like a skeleton’s, caught the attention of a great-grandmother.

“With those eyes he’s kind of spooky,” said Marie Haake of Oxnard. “That’s an idea. Why don’t you try to make a costume” like him?

Haake said Halloweekend offered appropriate activities for her four great-grandchildren.

“It’s safe and it’s wonderful for children,” she said. “There’s a little bit of everything for everybody.”

Throughout the day, performers from Hollywood’s Universal Studios wandered through the crowds dressed as Charlie Chaplin and Donatello of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. A hypnotist put audience members under his spell, and a makeup artist transformed faces into werewolves and zombies. The midway offered rides and food stands.

Barbie Arredondo, 18, of Camarillo had plans to attend a party as a devil Friday evening, so for 30 minutes she let Hollywood makeup artist Trent Cotner, a Ventura resident, cover her face in red and black paint.

“I hope it just comes off easily,” said her mother, Olivia. “Her dad’s going to freak out.”

As he blended the lines and shadows on Arredondo’s face, Cotner said, “I’ve had a few people ask me what I think they should be.” The artist’s suggestion? “Dead. All you have to do is make yourself look very sickly.”