John Kowalczyk poses with Krampus at The Strange and Unusual in Kingston on Saturday
Kevin Carroll | Times Leader
Enigmatic holiday creature poses for pictures at The Strange and Unusual
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Tracy Bogdan poses inside of a cage with Krampus, who paid a visit to The Strange and Unusual in Kingston on Saturday to take pictures.
Kevin Carroll | Times Leader
The line to see Krampus, even just a half hour after the picture-taking event started, stretched out of the store and all the way around the building.
Kevin Carroll | Times Leader
KINGSTON — Dressed in a dark red robe, he came to The Strange and Unusual on Saturday afternoon to take pictures with all of the area’s good boys and girls.
No, not Santa. Keeping more in line with the store’s love of the weird and bizarre, Saturday saw a visit from Krampus.
A line of people eager to get their photo taken with the legendary Krampus stretched outside the store all the way into the parking lot of Dairy Queen next door.
“Krampus is like the anti-Santa. Everyone does pictures with Santa so we wanted to do something different,” said Strange and Unusual owner Josh Balz.
This year marked the third time that Balz’s store brought the enigmatic Krampus in for pictures. The pandemic made holding the event impossible last year — and based on the sheer size of Saturday’s crowd, Krampus was missed in Kingston.
“We knew we had to bring it back this year, we tried to come up with a way to do it differently last year to be safer, but we decided not to,” Balz said. “The response has been overwhelming.”
For those unaware, the tale of Krampus is believed to have originated in the Alpine region of Europe. A horned creature covered in black hair, Krampus would pay visits to children and punish them if they were bad — in some versions of the tale, Krampus would carry a bag in which he would place naughty children and take them away from their homes as punishment.
Krampus’s story has become more widely-known over the last few years, with the holiday creature making appearances in several popular television shows and even his own horror movie.
The fear of punishment wasn’t enough to keep Saturday’s crowd away, however.
“We made an event on Facebook, it got over 1,000 responses,” Balz said. “Usually, you can’t tell whether or not that will actually translate to a huge crowd, but it looks like most of those people are here today.”
In years past, the Strange and Unusual team would sit Krampus right in the storefront. With such a big crowd, they moved him into their warehouse, allowing for more room inside the store for people to shop.
“We used to have to close the actual store because there was no room to shop,” Balz said. “Hopefully people come through and get their photos and they see something they like in here.”
Inside the warehouse, Krampus sat on his throne to receive his guests. If the visitors weren’t good enough this year to sit with Krampus, they could also take photos from inside of Krampus’s cage.
That’s right where Franklin Township resident Tracy Bogdan found herself as her picture was taken.
“This was so much fun, I’ve never done anything like this before,” Bogdan said.
While Bogdan’s trip down from the Back Mountain might seem like a long drive, numerous visitors waiting in line came from even further.
“I used to go to this store when they were in Philadelphia,” said Brianne Rankosky, who drove up from Philadelphia with her son Aleksei. “We were coming up to visit family, so I figured we could swing by here, too.”
Aleksei was more than ready to visit Krampus: He had company in line in the form of his very own Krampus doll.
“I’m so excited to meet Krampus,” he said.
