Ouija boards, tarot readers, a snake charmer named Luke — oh my! — were all present (in addition to Macklemore, Hunter S. Thompson and Frida Kahlo) at Johnson City’s prime bohemian oasis, the Spool Mfg. this Friday evening for the second annual Triple Cities Scareousel Fantasmagorical Freakshow Ball.

Donned with spider webs, rotting limbs and holographic monsters, Spool resembled a cross between a grunge-inspired rave and a haunted house, with far less bodily fluids. The cuisine included cake balls disguised as eyeballs, “bloody” cupcakes and most frightening of all, vegetable crudité. The foyer led guests to a tarot reading station and then to a contortionist and local bands in the main room, with a haunted hallway leading to refreshments en route to the back rooms, which included Ouija boards and more music.

Chris Bodnarczuk, a 25-year-old 2011 Binghamton University graduate, is the editor-in-chief of the Triple Cities Carousel, an independent local newspaper. Bodnarczuk started the Ball last October to help his paper break even. He sat down with Release to give some background on the process of bringing such a huge shindig to life.

Release: What is it that made you start this particular fundraiser?

Chris Bodnarczuk: There ain’t no money in free papers. And I think I owed them printer money, so I figured we’d have a party. I’ve always been a big Halloween fan, we were always doing parties and saw the space here and it’s too good not to use, so we decided to have a big Halloween party. It’s sort of a rave with live music and good food and not as many pacifiers in people’s teeth.

R: So what did this entail?

CB: Well last year, I pretty much was here from 10 a.m. to 5 a.m. for about a week and a half and it was me and very, very few other people running around, up and down ladders, putting up lights and just kind of doing this and that; the point of this was kind of to do a one night festival of freaks. It was really just an excuse to throw a big party and ideally make some money out of it. We get a lot of help, a lot of donations. We got all the food vendors, the beer comes free to us. It’s a very small town that I luckily have a lot of good friends in and they’re willing to [help].

R: What exactly inspired the “freak show” aspect of it? Or is that just something you’ve always been interested in?

CB: I’ve always kind of been interested in the aesthetic of the freak show, or the sideshow kind of thing — which, you know, we keep it subtle here. Last year, it was very disorganized. We had sword dancing, we had snake charming, but there was no real schedule for when to have it. It was very haphazard. It was very dark in the whole place and so, yeah, that was the test year, and this is a lot more fun.

R: Do you have any different plans for next year?

CB: Spool is such an awesome space, but there’s a lot of work that goes into making it look presentable to the public because there’s a lot of rooms that don’t generally get seen by the public. There’s a lot of elbow grease that goes into it. And I love this space and I would never want to abandon it. Maybe we just do advanced tickets next year, maybe not as many bands. It’s kind of super hectic right now. I guess it’s just going to grow. Every last dollar that came into [the paper] last year went back out to pay off this and that and everything. This year we actually get to pay the bands and pay the performers.

It’s an extension of what the paper does — fostering a kind of alternative community in town. We’re full of freaks. There’s a girl putting nails into her nose over there. And I mean, it’s awesome. We’re a fucked up town. It’s nice to showcase that. You get a lot of street festivals that are for the fifty and above market — during the summer at least. And there’s starting to be a push for more things for college kids and kind of bridging that gap. That’s the whole goal of the paper. When I was a student at BU, I didn’t go off campus. I lived on Leroy Street for a year and I didn’t leave my house. You start venturing out and there was so much going on in this town that’s really off the cuff, and we like to think this is a big celebration of all that.

This interview has been edited and condensed.