The Story of The Witch Ride

The Witches of South Walton is a group of women founded by Carol Stafford and Le Thompson dedicated to raising money for the Children’s Volunteer Health Network.

​The inaugural ride was held Oct. 31, 2004, started by three friends, who would get together a few times a week to ride down the 30A bike path for exercise.

​The ride began with just a few friends and has grown over the years to include a pre-ride party to register for the ride and get to know the new witches, a post-ride brunch and raffle with lots of goodies donated from local businesses. The ride always held on Halloween morning(or the Friday before). They ride 2.2 miles along West Scenic Highway 30A, starting at Gulf Place to Butler Elementary to greet the children as they arrive at school and then back to Gulf Place and off to Brunch(some even riding there as well). 

​In the fall of 2016, the Witches of South Walton officially became Witches of South Walton, Inc a Florida based nonprofit organization.
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“I jokingly suggested that we wear witch hats on Halloween day. We did, and got lots of attention. Busses honked their horns at us, trucks blew and whistled at us, the kids going to school loved it, and so did most all the parents and teachers,” said Stafford.

The 2019 ride saw our largest participation and made us begin to think of how we could continue to grow our event. As the ride was winding down, Lisa, Alyssa, & Erin approached us after the ride asking if we'd consider to expand into Bluewater. Then came 2020 and everything changed. Since we had been asked for a number of years: Why is the ride so early? Why can't we ride on the weekend? This gave us the ability to to test other options for the ride and if they didn't work we could also go back to our single morning ride.

Needless to say, the Saturday Goblin Ride sold out is about 15 minutes. Now as we begin our 2022 season we have expanded to 8 rides between Walton & Okaloosa Counties all benefitting CVHN. In May of 2023, the Witches have officially become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. 

Keep on Cackling