Seth Gasche usually helps people by offering comfort to grieving families—but tonight, he offers popcorn.

Mingling is brewing among the witches, ninjas, dinosaurs and Luke Skywalker when it’s 6:40 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 26.  Some parents holding the hands of costumed children enter the Monster Mash, a community event to promote and bring awareness to downtown Ashland. Greeted by Sandra Tunnell, the president of Main Street Program and event coordinator, they arrive late after having congregated on an empty downtown street corner until they saw the advertisements posted on parking signs with permanent marker directions noting the change in location to the Sheriff’s Annex on East Main Street due to cold weather.

So it’s an unusually small turnout tonight, according to Gasche, who says the Shaw Shank Redemption showing attracted over 100 people.  After the children parade around the room and Gasche kneels, giving a first place prize to the policeman awarded “best dressed,” telling him he receives the gift also for doing a good job leading the parade, some families depart 15 minutes after the movie Hocus Pocus begins, including one woman carrying her dinosaur-dressed baby who says the event was nice but that her youngster became cranky.  Another girl dressed as a witch asks her dad if they can leave because she is tired, but they stay for half the movie. 

Three-fourths into the film and 35 bags of popcorn later, only about 10 people are left in the room.  Gasche cleans out the red vintage-style popcorn machine with wheels and two spokes, unplugging it from the wall and packaging in a pyramid the leftovers in carnival popcorn bags on the free-snacks-table.

He received the popcorn machine as a surprise gift from Roger Primm, the previous owner of Denbow-Primm-Kemery Funeral Home at 313 Center Street before Gasche bought the business from him two years ago. 

Gasche, at age 26, is younger than the average funeral home director, having first worked in a funeral home as an after-school job at age 15.  Since then, he met his wife Lindsey in mortuary science school and together they run Denbow’s (the Monster Mash sponsor), where Gasche says he hasn’t had a day off in over a month since he and his wife went to Cedar Point. 

Because Gasche, a humanitarian, serves the community by comforting grief-stricken families in times of loss, he says it’s important to be actively involved in order to show support for the city and its people.  Historically, he says, “The funeral industry has always been a leader in the community.  It’s a service that you don’t actively promote,” but it is there when the people need it.

Gasche is used to seeing people on the worst day of their lives and bringing comfort to them in assisting with preparations where family members are often too overwhelmed to handle.  He and his wife serve popcorn at all community events because being the positive environments and happy faces are therapeutic.

“We are enjoying seeing people on their better days than on their worst days.  It’s a ministry to us,” Gasche says.

One person who contributed to that ministry tonight was a 24-year-old, plaid-shirted scarecrow with face paint stitchings on her cheeks named Victoria Smith, who carried her five-month-old Adelaide, dressed as a watermelon, as a part of the parade with the other elementary-school-age kids.

Smith tries to go to all the community events because she wants her daughter to grow up and make an impact in the community by attending positive events, rather than negative ones.  While she mentions that some people “ditched” the event, she says she doesn’t care what people think.  She stays for the whole movie, holding her watermelon daughter through occasional squirming and fussing until she calms down.

“I think it’s important to the community,” Smith says.  “I wish more people would come to these events.  People always come together when bad things happen.  I just think it’s important to set an example for the kids to come together and do fun things.”

Smith says with the confusion about the location, she believes the events need to be promoted more.

The Main Street Program events are one step towards becoming a progressive, growing city, Gasche says, by refurbishing and reviving the city to a culture that is attractive to young couples, the college students at Ashland University, and the future of Ashland—those children before him dressed in masks and costumes.

Even with a low attendance and early departures, the Monster Mash was successful not by face value standards, considering the low attendance and early departures, nor even by the generosity of canned good donations collected for the Food Bank.  Rather, the event was worthwhile because it attempted to establish the uplifting spirit of community that people like Smith desire and Gasche need—one where happy children enjoy one of the most fun days of the year, chomping on candy, interacting with other kid creatures, being innocent.  Even just a few happy faces make a difference and touch lives—even if only for the man making popcorn in the back of the room.