More than 50K people show out for downtown Chicago's Arts in the Dark Halloween Parade

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Around 50,000 people attended the Arts in the Dark Halloween Parade on Saturday.

"We're very big fans of Halloween," one parade attendee said. "It's so fun!"

Around 4,000 people participated in the parade, cackling, riding, drumming and zombie walking their way down State Street.

"I'm down here with all seven of my grandbabies, first time down here for the Halloween parade. I'm really enjoying myself," one grandmother attending the parade said.

Young and old, people packed both sides of the street for a celebration of Halloween, which organizers call "the artist's holiday."

"It's a spectacle procession different from any Halloween parade, and, I believe, any parade that you see in Chicago," said LUMA8 President and CEO Sharene Shariatzadeh. "There's music. There's dance. There's spectacle puppets, and it's diverse in every way. It's every cultural community, people of all ages, people of all abilities."

Approximately 90 arts organizations represented nearly all of Chicago's neighborhoods, showing off different cultures with colorful performances.

"It looked like a blast. I'm going to be honest. I just came to see the dancing. It looks pretty cool," one attendee said.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson helped kick off a celebration that's recently been named one of the top 10 Halloween parades in the country by USA Today.

"What a time to celebrate all the costumes, the smiles, the Halloween season. The way we bring families together in the city of Chicago, it's like no other!" Johnson said.

The ninth version of this annual Halloween tradition celebrated its biggest and best parade to date just in time to go even bigger for next year's festivities.

"The parade has been awesome. Everyone is so talented, and it's just been an amazing experience," one person along the route said.