Coming soon to Greene County is the first ever HallowGreene festival, a fall event sponsored by Washington Health System. According to Stephanie Wagoner, a marketing employee of the Washington Health System, the event will serve a wide range of purposes, including creating a family-fun environment and educating the community.

The event will be at WHS Greene, the hospital located in Waynesburg. The festival begins at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 19.

“It’s a community fall festival that we are putting on for the community,” said Wagoner.

WHS has planned activities to attract and entertain attendees of all ages at the HallowGreene Community Fall Festival. For the children in the community 12 and younger, there will be games and ‘trunk-or-treating.’

WHS will also provide health screenings  for attendees, as well as education tables to educate the community on a number of different health topics.

“It’s a nice way to bring the whole community together to have fun during fall here,” said Wagoner.

Registration is open for the event online, and will remain accessible until it begins Oct. 19. On the day of the festival, there will also be an opportunity to register at the door.

“The event is free right now on our website, whs.org, and there is a pre-registration that you can go on and when you show up you can skip some of the waiting lines, walk up to the pre-registration table and they will sign you directly in so you can start your way through,” Wagoner said. “We do ask people to register during the event when they come on sight, or pre-register for the event.”

This is the first year for the festival, which is free to all attendees. While WHS is the primary sponsor for the event, other companies are also providing support for the festival, some of which include Concordia Hospice and the American Cancer Society.

“We are putting the whole thing together,” Wagoner said. “There are a few other affiliated companies that will be present there.”

While the hospital aims to bring “family-fun” to the area, they also look to showcase the many new features they have brought to their new facility in Greene County since acquiring it.

“One major thing that we’d like to get out of this is for people to come down to our facility,” Wagoner said.

According to Wagoner, since WHS acquired the facility three years ago, there’s been “quite a bit of improvement.”

“A number of them are adding in a new MRI machine that is state of the art, we’ve increased some private rooms in the emergency department, to showcase that a patient can come in and have a much more private experience with them and their family,” Wagoner said.

WHS has created the festival to incorporate their health education along with promoting “family-fun” in the Waynesburg community that it services.

“I think it’s a great way for the community to all come together and enjoy a nice fall festival and have some healthy aspect included with it,” Wagoner said.