Festival of Oddities is ghosting Charlotte for a new location

It’s one of Greater Lansing’s biggest and most popular festivals. Every year, the Festival of Oddities brings thousands to the heart of downtown Charlotte.

The two-day festival is the mid-Michigan kick off to the Halloween season and has about 100 booths filled with all the vampirish vendors, goth gear, macabre macramé and snarky shirts you can imagine.

And this year, the festival fell apart.

But it’s a festival based on ghosts and ghost stories.

And real ghost stories don’t evaporate … they just … evolve.

In many legends, when a ghost satisfies their unfulfilled mission, they can move on.

Their story ends.

After years of being rooted to haunted places, the next Festival of Oddities will likely be in a field, or on a not-exactly-haunted city street somewhere, founder Jenn Carpenter told City Pulse.

“I’m getting lots of offers and inquiries,” she said, “cities all over mid-Michigan and even in another state.” 

A festival based on ghost stories has accumulated enough of its own substance to exist independent of haunted houses.

“Before, I always wanted a location that felt like it was also a draw of a destination,” Carpenter said. “Now the festival is a draw itself.”

This is the true story of the based-on-ghost-stories Festival of Oddities

The Festival of Oddities began at one of Lansing’s most storied homes, the Turner Dodge mansion in Lansing in 2019.

It’s one of the earliest homes in Lansing and is one of the oldest structures still around here, built by pioneers Marion and James Turner. The Classic Revival style is a testament to the creation of Lansing itself and the transition to the automotive era.

The tourable mansion is the first entry in the “Haunted Lansing” book by Carpenter, released in 2018. The book is the inciting incident for the entire festival. Many people lived, loved and died in the Turner-Dodge home over the course of a century, as Carpenter’s book says, but likely none were as firmly rooted to the home as matriarch Marion Turner, who fell for the land before she met James.

Visitors to Marion’s bedroom should be prepared, Carpenter’s book says, so they won’t “be surprised if they hear the fireplace seem to roar to life.”

Conceived as a vehicle for Carpenter’s book, which spans nearly two dozen local spooky tales, the Festival of Oddities came to life in 2019, outgrew the Turner-Dodge home almost immediately.

The Courthouse Square Museum in Charlotte is in the middle, not the end or beginning, of Carpenter’s book

The festival moved to the downtown Charlotte city block in 2020, anchored to the museum inside the old courthouse. 

The 1885 courthouse has had many reasons over the years to be haunted: from judges’ verdicts and weeping families to the prisoners and orphans who slept in the basement.

Carpenter said she moved the festival there because there was space and parking despite the 30-minute drive from Lansing.

But the scare potential and the draw of the Charlotte courthouse was front and center.

Launching a new festival site in a pandemic year was tricky but it worked.

The large city block was too big at first but has since become cramped, with a sister festival packing another street and organized by Needful Things, a downtown Charlotte thrift and consignment store, along with plenty of city businesses that run coordinated special events and sales.

Carpenter said she has had mostly good times with the Charlotte location, so much that she opened an expansion to her REO Town Deadtime Stories bookstore inside the Charlotte courthouse in 2025.

Deadtime Stories: The Sequel wasn’t exactly a best-seller, Carpenter said.

“I was grateful for the support from the other small businesses but Charlotte never really got used to retail shopping at the museum,” she said.

While the REO store remains open, the sequel one folded earlier this year.

But that’s not what caused the festival to move.

The disturbance at the festival

The festival is moving, Carpenter said, after out-of-state protesters showed up along with some people who attempted to confront visitors with signs and bullhorns. 

Some of the efforts were on par for large festivals, like seeing religious protesters standing across the street with signs damning people to hell. Other efforts were clearly intended to push toward confrontation, like when a man preaching with a bullhorn went right up to the booths, which were on the sidewalk.

In one video, a man with a bullhorn yelled at a man who was sitting down minding his own business.

Carpenter said some of the protesters attempted to rile up parents by telling their children they would be school shooters or that their parents didn’t love them. She said the protesters violated city noise ordinances and should have been stopped from the harassing behavior.

Carpenter said Charlotte police were not able to handle the situation. Throughout the day, festival volunteers trailed the protesters as they walked the perimeter of the festival, often on sidewalks and close enough to be able to touch the vendor booths.

A meeting was arranged after the festival with Carpenter, Charlotte City Council member Jeffrey Christensen, the mayor, police chief and City Manager Vester Davis, according to a Facebook post by Christensen. Christensen said Davis asked to him and the mayor to skip the meeting.

Davis didn’t answer specific questions from City Pulse but said in an email that it was a “greatly attended festival,” and Charlotte has an opportunity to plan next year’s event alongside an event planner. 

“Lastly, it is a shame that the actions of protestors have resulted in the Oddities Festival turning down Charlotte. My hope is that Oddities will reconsider.”

Carpenter said the festival will return but not in Charlotte.

She said the city was unprepared for protestors, in part because the event is typically so peaceful that extra officers aren’t planned. Carpenter said she doesn’t feel safe bringing the festival back to Charlotte.

The ghosts left behind

Moving the festival out of the courthouse will be a huge blow for the Courthouse Square Museum housed there, said Julie Kimmer, a museum board member and former director.

The 2026 Festival of Oddities in downtown Charlotte on Saturday, Sept. 5., 2026. Mike Ellis/City Pulse

She said festival-goers brought in $6,200 for the museum via $5 admissions over two days, with volunteers staffing the museum. 

It’s the museum’s biggest fundraising event each year, she said.

“The festival was a real gift to us” Kimmer said. “It’s impossible for museums like this to pay for their expenses.”

Kimmer said she spent a whole day at this year’s festival trailing the protesters out of concern.

“I was terribly nervous,” she said. “I had never seen anybody try so hard to get in a fight. Nobody took the bait.”

The festival brought about $1.2 million in spending to the area, according to numbers shared at a Charlotte city council meeting following the dispute.

What’s the last chapter in “Haunted Lansing”?

Carpenter’s book ends with a thinly veiled story about her own haunted house, a few miles outside of Lansing.

“When I lived in my haunted house, I couldn’t so much as rearrange the furniture without upsetting the delicate balance of sharing my living space with nonliving entities,” she wrote.

Now that the festival is being rearranged, upsetting the delicate balance of one of mid-Michigan’s largest festivals, there will be a new festival.

Carpenter said her priorities are finding a location in mid-Michigan and keeping the Labor Day weekend.

And this year, she overheard someone describe the Festival of Oddities as “Spooky Pride.”

“We aren’t really a Pride event but we are completely welcoming and we may incorporate that into our merch next year,” Carpenter said.

Expect a decision fairly soon, if Carpenter hadn’t moved the festival, she’d be planning the details for the 2027 festival now.

“I’d love to have this decided in a couple of weeks,” she said. “And we’ll start the spooky season.