OJAI : Streets Come Alive for Day of the Dead

As dusk settled over Ojai on Friday, skeleton-costumed dancers carrying a coffin emerged to parade through the streets to the astonishment and delight of spectators.

The event was El Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.

The traditional Mexican holiday was brought to Ojai by the Ventura County Multicultural Arts Council. Each year for seven years, a different town in the county has hosted the holiday.

“The procession symbolizes the journey of the dead coming from their grave sites to their final resting place or altar where there is music and festivities,” said Javier Gomez, arts council chairman. “It’s a reaffirmation that the dead are alive also.”

The procession was headed by the dancing skeletons and a group dressed in Aztec regalia. A truck followed, playing Mexican music and bearing a coffin hovered over by a man in a devil mask. Next came girls in long, multicolored dresses and boys in peasant outfits with straw sombreros.

Joining the dancers were people bearing flags with skulls and a poster of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and noisemakers with whistles, drums and rattles to wake and welcome the dead.

Rachael Pratt of Ojai, dressed in black with a white gauze mask, had brought her son Lincoln, 4, to the celebration as an alternative to Halloween trick-or-treating. “I like ethnic festivals,” she said.

Luis Velarde, 85, had walked a block from his home to join the parade. “I wouldn’t miss this,” he said. As part of the holiday he had driven 200 miles, visiting cemeteries where his family members are buried.