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Costumed Ashevillians flock to downtown for Halloween festivities in midst of storm recovery

In the aftermath of Helene, downtown Asheville looked a little different than years past. But locals are still trying to make the best of it.

The Asheville Downtown Association hosted a block party last night and BPR’s Laura Hackett was there to chat with folks, who were dressed up as everything from wizards to water bottles.

Laura Hackett is an Edward R. Murrow award-winning reporter for Blue Ridge Public Radio. She joined the newsroom in 2023 as a Government Reporter and in 2025 moved into a new role as BPR's Helene Recovery Reporter. Before entering the world of public radio, she wrote for Mountain Xpress, AVLtoday and the Asheville Citizen-Times. She has a degree in creative writing from Florida Southern College, and in 2023, she completed the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY's Product Immersion for Small Newsrooms program.