One of the most unique festivals of the year returns to Toronto this weekend, bringing with it a chance for the city's residents to quite literally come face to face with their fears.

For the past 25 years, Toronto's very own Clay and Paper Theatre has been unleashing their Night of Dread festival upon the city, proudly touting the tagline "facing our fears together since 1999."

Despite featuring a number of parallel and overlapping themes and motifs, the festival, which runs throughout October with a grand finale parade and pageant on the last Saturday of the month, was initially conceived as an anti-Halloween event, co-artistic director Tamara Romanchuk tells blogTO.

"It started as a celebration for those who were fed up with the hyper-commercializing of Halloween," she says, noting that Clay and Paper has always placed an emphasis on environmentally friendly arts and climate.

Tamara adds that the festival is also intended to "remind people what this time of year is about," with autumn embodying the end of the growth cycle, the clearing of harvest and, in more than a few ways, death.

"It's an opportunity for people to talk about death and the end of things," Tamara says, invoking elements of the festival such as the chamber of shrines, where attendees can create shrines to people and things they wish to remember, which centre around themes of death, rememberance and grieving.

Perhaps the largest thematic pillar of the festival, though, is fear.

"Things become darker around this time of year," Tamara says, "and with the darkness, our fears come out."

"Night of Dread is a chance to name fears, mock fears and banish fears."

This is done through a parade, where attendees can sign out massive puppets created by Clay and Paper Theatre and march them through the neighbourhood before culminating for a pageant which features a theatrical performance centred around the "fear of the year."

The parade is set to kick off around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 26, with parade participants gathering between 5 and 6 p.m. at the Dufferin Grove Basketball Court before marching through the neighbourhood and eventually leading up to the pageant.

Night of Dread parade map.

Throughout the weeks leading up to the festival, Clay and Paper polls the community on their greatest fears, creating a gigantic puppet inspired by them, which will be presented, fought against and conquered within the central theatrical show of the pageant.

This year, Tamara tells blogTO the five central themes of hopelessness and apathy, war, faschism, climate change and the normalization of hate and dehumanization arose as the most pervasive, and, despite being seemingly individual concepts, Clay and Paper's artistic team realized they all had something in common.

"These things aren't just separate," Tamara says, "they're are all connected, and so we combined them all for the fear of the year to be the Fear of Relentless Destruction."

A fear that is ultimately death, and the stunning 12-foot tall puppet they've created will represent that well, she says.

The pageant also features performances from a number of Toronto-based talent, like singer Janice Jo Lee, vocal group Ori Shalva, floutist Heidi Wai-Yee Chen, the Kensington Horns, and New Model Circus Army all accompanying the experience.

This year's Night of Dread holds more significance than simply upholding tradition, though.

Earlier this year, Clay and Paper Theatre announced that they'd be shutting down their Sterling Road studio due rising costs and shrinking funding, closing the doors of their public-facing outlet amid their 30th anniversary season.

While Clay and Paper has continued to be able to provide programming, like Night of Dread and its related workshops in the months since, Tamara tells blogTO that this year's event is essential for the survival of the organization.

"I'm not going to lie, we're still struggling," she says, adding that "fundraising is crucial to their survival."

In an effort to raise the funds necessary to keep the organization (and thus, events like Night of Dread,) Clay and Paper has launched a fundraising effort with a goal of $10,000.

"People give very generously at Night of Dread. I expect we might be able to reach half of that, but we really need to reach all of it," she says. "People don't realize it, but artists subsidize the art scene and communities. You may not realize it, but you're enjoying all of this art at an actual personal cost to us."

You can learn more about how to support Clay and Paper Theatre on this website.