By Neil Offen

noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646

CHAPEL HILL -- There's more to celebrating Halloween in Orange County than just sashaying up and down Franklin Street in your outrageous costume.

For instance:

You can go trick or treating at the Orange County Historical Museum, 210 N. Tryon St., today from 6-9 p.m., as part of the Last Fridays celebration; 732-2201. Or you can take the Spirits of Hillsborough Haunted Tours, also today, at 7, 7:30, 8 and 8:30 p.m.

If you want to get an early, active start on the day itself, Heels4Hope will hold its first Halloween race Saturday at 10 a.m. on the UNC campus. The 5K Challenge starts at the Bell Tower, and post-race festivities will be at Granville Towers.

For the youngsters 4 and up, there's Creepy Crawly Halloween, 10:30 a.m. to noon Saturday at the N.C. Botanical Garden.

Also for the kids, Kidzu Museum hosts its Halloween Spooktacular Event, with stories, fun crafts, games and prizes today, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; 933-1455.

One block over on East Franklin Street, the Laser Halloween Show will be featured at Morehead Planetarium and Science Center Saturday at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m.; 962-1236.

If your teens want to stay indoors on Halloween, they should head to Fright Night '09 at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro. From 8 p.m., there will be live bands, a dance party with DJ Doom, Dracula's photo booth and old horror movies shown all night long; 929-2787, ext.219 or 240.

Halloween marks the end of the season for the McKee CornField Maze in Rougemont; There's a 12-acre adventurous maze and a 2-acre interactive children's maze. On Halloween, there will also be a haunted trail through the big maze; 732-8065.

Club action on Franklin Street includes the Halloween Spooktacular hosted by the very appropriately named Taz Halloween at The Cave; 968-9308.

And of course there is that big Franklin Street celebration. It's not as big as it used to be, thanks to efforts to control it more. But what Chapel Hill officials now call Homegrown Halloween 2009 is still a pretty big deal, with around 30,000 people expected.

Once again, the plan this year is to restrict traffic access to downtown Chapel Hill and restrict liquor sales. For information about the event, traffic and other restrictions, visit www.townofchapelhill.org/index.aspx?page=1173.

Chatham County

The fourth annual Jordan Lake Halloween Festival will take place Saturday and Sunday at Jordan Lake Farm, 1226 Martha's Chapel Road, Apex.

The Grass Cats, Sweet Potato Pie, Orquesta GarDel, Cool John Ferguson, John Dee Holeman & Billy Stevens, Mel Melton & The Wicked Mojos, Down River, Zydecopious, Vintage Blu, Nu-Blu and others will perform, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; 800-514-3849.