On the last Saturday morning of October, the streets of Elmwood Park fill with skeletons, witches, and at least one Sasquatch. The Nightmare in Elmwood 5K and Kids Fun Run, set for October 24, 2026, sends runners and walkers through one of downtown Columbia's oldest and most architecturally intact neighborhoods, past porches and lawns that residents have spent weeks turning into Halloween set pieces. It is a race, but the race is only part of the point.
The event is hosted by GRIT Endurance, the Columbia race management company run by Erin Roof, and it benefits the Historic Elmwood Park Neighborhood Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to the neighborhood's upkeep and improvement. Roof and the neighborhood launched the race in 2022 as a brand-new addition to the local running calendar, and it has grown steadily since. By its third running the neighborhood association was advertising more than 520 participants, and its sponsorship materials now pitch exposure to 650-plus Midlands-area homeowners, pet lovers, and health enthusiasts. The 2026 edition is billed as the fifth year.
The course is not a flat loop through a park. According to a 2022 race report on the running blog Tour de Blue Shoes, the route drops down nearly to the bottom of the Park Street hill, turns onto Confederate Street, and climbs back up a parallel street, Lincoln, before an out-and-back return that repeats the descent and the climb. The middle of the race runs relatively flat and fast, including a stretch on the Vista greenway. The same report noted that residents appeared to be staging a house-decorating contest along the route, with decorations elaborate enough that the runner assumed it was an organized competition. That instinct was reasonable. Elmwood Park has a long habit of turning its front porches into gathering places: from April through October, neighbors host first-Friday porch parties, calling out to each other as they walk by.
The neighborhood itself is the reason the race feels different from a typical road 5K. The land north of Columbia was once John and Sarah Taylor's 250-acre Tickleberry Plantation. After Sarah died in 1842, the property was divided among their six children and a granddaughter. In 1852, roughly 100 acres became a cemetery after the child of a South Carolina College professor died. An adjacent plot became a fairground and hosted the South Carolina State Fair from 1856 to 1861 and again from 1869 to 1903. When the fair moved to its present site along Bluff Road in 1903, W.A. Clark sold 24 acres to the Richland Real Estate Company for subdivision that September. The plat filed on September 9, 1903 named the tract Elmwood, and the first lot went to Annie Elizabeth Boozer on January 2, 1904. Elmwood Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district in 1991.
That history is visible on the run. The neighborhood holds one of the largest collections of early twentieth-century homes remaining in Columbia, and Historic Columbia leads walking tours through it that begin and end at Roy Lynch Park, pointing out architectural forms and the notable residents who once lived there. Among them: Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who lived on Wayne Street as a child and went on to serve as Archbishop of Cincinnati and then Chicago; the photographer Constantine "Gus" Manos, who grew up on Price Street and whose work is held by the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris; and the writer William Price Fox, who grew up on Wayne Street during the Depression and later wrote for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, and the Atlantic Monthly. Roy Lynch Park itself is named for an Army veteran and Anchor Continental employee who lived in Elmwood Park from 1955 until his death in 1981, fathered eight children, and helped found the neighborhood association out of worry about children playing in increasingly busy streets. The park was dedicated in July 1981.
The race start, 2204 Park Street, is the Village Church Downtown Campus, which also serves as the meeting point for Historic Columbia's neighborhood walking tours. Registration covers two distances, a 5K and a one-mile kids fun run, with entry fees running from about $22 to $43 depending on the option. Costumes are encouraged rather than required, and prizes go to the top six most creative outfits, so the field tends to look less like a starting corral and more like a costume parade that happens to be moving at a jog. Strollers are welcome and leashed dogs are allowed. Registered runners get a soft-blend racing shirt, with an early-October deadline to guarantee the size.
For anyone who would rather watch than run, the neighborhood is open, and late October in Elmwood Park is a good time to walk it. The race is a fundraiser, but it is also a bit of neighborhood self-promotion: a way to get several hundred people who might otherwise drive past the historic district to come up Park Street, look at the houses, and see what the association has been protecting since Roy Lynch first worried about kids in the road.