Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun

“We were set up on a girl date,” Kimberley’s Natalie Skokan says laughing, sipping a living-room cocktail, while she recalls how she and business partner Chantel Delaney met seven years ago. “Our husbands played music in a local pub and suggested that Chantel and I hang out as we’d probably love each other.” Next week, as they sat together during one of their husband’s gigs, their conversation meandered through their love of the mountains, mutual marketing backgrounds, and eventually veered towards Chantel’s obsession with horror films. “Chantel was having a conversation about how fixated she is with horror films,” Skokan says, “but in my head, I was planning an event. Two days later, I called her and said, ‘We’ve got a date booked at Centennial Hall. Guess we’re doing it.’”

Over the following weeks, they designed a blueprint for the first annual Kimberley Horror Fest, a celebration of homegrown horror productions and professional films from abroad. The event drew a soldout crowd draped in dripping blood, their favourite steampunk gear, and mermaid tails. Freddy

Krueger

and Jason waited for beers behind Napoleon Dynamite and a duo of Mexican troubadours.

Over the next five years, the Horror Fest, complete with a panel of Canadian film industry judges, would develop a cult following. “Every year, the quality of films just kept getting better and better,” Skokan says. “And, we learned to throw one hell of a good party.”

“With any relationship, you find your roles,” Delaney notes. “Nat’s the visionary, the ideas person. I’m the organizer, sifting through her wild ideas and figuring out what boxes we need to check to pull them off.” The two share a magnetic chemistry. They laugh a lot. They banter back and forth, and together they complement each other's creative visions. They bring out the best in each other. Between them, they’ve accomplished an impressive array of sold-out events: the 24-hour Photo Contest, Christmas shopping extravaganzas, Saltwater Sessions music events, and the East Kootenay Music Search. Last summer they produced Kimberley’s Kaleidoscope Arts and Culture Festival.

“Kimberley shows up,” Skokan says. “You put something on and they’re there, either as an audience or part of the incredible talent.”

Perhaps the most exciting recent news is that their company, Original Goat Productions, just took over an iconic Kimberley event, the Dirtbag Festival, scheduled to return May 12-13, 2023 (see below).

“We live in this beautiful town and love to see these things take place,” Delaney says. “And, there’s always that moment when we say, ‘We made that happen. That’s pretty cool.’”