HONESDALE -- Tuesday night's Halloween parade in Honesdale featured all sorts of frights, ghosts and goblins.
One float had a message for everyone on the parade route which was for some, a scary message.
Some scary Halloween costumes are make-believe and others are closer to the real thing.
The annual Halloween parade in Honesdale had both.
Volunteers spent weeks creating one particular parade float; a spooky graveyard scene surrounded by drug dealers in handcuffs and prison orange.
"A lot of people choose to have their head in the sand, it's time to get people's head out of the sand and wake up and see what's happening around them," said Gerald Margraf.
Margraf suited up as the Grim Reaper. Just a concerned citizen, Margraf started what he calls the Wayne County Heroin Prevention Task Force. The group grew on Facebook and wanted its float to send a clear message.
"If you deal heroin you're going to wind up in jail." said Margraf. "You're going to wind up as an inmate, if you do heroin you're ultimately going to wind up here."
In the past four years, heroin and opiate related overdose deaths in Wayne County have gone up.
In 2011 there were about a half-dozen of those deaths. Now in 2014 there were already 8 confirmed and 4 possibly pending cases, according to figures obtained from the Wayne County Coroner's office.
"We're here because drugs are an epidemic. We can't clean up our homes until we clean up our streets, and can clean up the streets until we clean up our home," said task force member Suzie Frisch.
The people dressed to look like dealers passed out candy to kids along the parade route. However, Margraf admits the float's message is not sugar-coated at all .
Some parents in the crowd said that message is an important one.
"It took somebody to stand up and say there is a problem, acknowledge it, and let's do something about it. Say we're not going to stand for it," said Eric Irwin of Honesdale.
"I think it's absolutely necessary to send this kind of message. I think it's become a huge problem in our area, which is very scary. It's very scary for everyone involved," said Jessica Ebert of Honesdale.
The task force's float won first place at the parade but the group's leaders said this is only the beginning of an effort to win back the community from heroin.