Let the word go out to those residents in Durham -- and elsewhere across the region and the state -- that in years past thought Franklin Street in Chapel Hill was a cool place to be Halloween night.

That word is, or more accurately those words are:

Stay away. Forget about it. Don't even think of making the pilgrimage to the downtown area stretching along the University of North Carolina campus.

That's not to say the folks in Chapel Hill don't want a party.

They just want a party that doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to police and doesn't create a scene more frightening than a haunted house on Halloween night.

For the second year, Chapel Hill and UNC officials -- and student leaders -- are working to try to get the Halloween celebration back to what it started out as many years ago, a good-natured, enjoyable evening and night for the local community.

But year after year, the crowd grew as folks flocked to Chapel Hill from many surrounding cities and campuses. By 2007, the crowd had swelled to more than 70,000 people and the town said, "enough!" Security cost very close to a quarter-million dollars that year, and Halloween night had become one of the busiest of the year for UNC Hospital's emergency room.

So again this year, "Hometown Halloween" will be for hometown folks only.

As Mayor Kevin Foy, preparing to oversee his last Halloween, put it at a press conference last week to unveil preparations for this year's celebration:

"If you can walk to Franklin Street, then come. If you have to drive, don't come."

Foy had prefaced that crisp comment by noting "there comes a breaking point when there are too many people in too small an area," which pretty well summed up the challenge leading up to last year.

So roads into town will be closed, the Highway Patrol will be roaming the perimeter watching for drunken drivers, and downtown bars have agreed not to admit anyone after 1 a.m.

"We don't want to be inhospitable, but that's the way it is," Police Chief Brian Curran said

And that's the way it should be.