The Guernsey County courthouse will be home to ghosts, goblins, witches and other scary creatures for special Halloween light shows this October on selected evenings. Colorful lights synchronized to Halloween favorites that is fun for kids of all ages!
Shows run nightly through Halloween October 31st. 7pm to 9PM
The Guernsey County courthouse comes alive nightly with tens of thousands of colorful lights computer synchronized to both traditional and contemporary holiday music beginning November 1st through January 1st of the new year. This magnificent historical 1881 building jumps into the 21st Century as it is bathed in more than 85,000 lights, an amazing twenty three foot Christmas tree and 60 animated displays. Each hour features a wide variety of music including children’s, contemporary and traditional Christmas favorites. Scroll down for show dates and times
The courthouse light show is created and paid for through donations of money and time from from community minded people like you! Consider making a monetary donation of any amount. 100% of your donation goes directly to the maintaining and growing the show. DONATE NOW!
Visit the Dickens Welcome Center on Wheeling Avenue to purchase Light Show and Dickens holiday souvenirs that support these projects. THANK YOU and MERRY CHRISTMAS!
See this FREE show each evening from 5:30pm until 9pm daily through New Years Day! Plus there are extended show hours on selected dates. OPENING NIGHT CEREMONY IS NOVEMBER 7th, 7pm!
2026 SPECIAL EXTENDED SHOW DATES: (Runs until 10pm) 11/10, 11/11, 11/12, 11/13, 11/14, 11/25, Thanksgiving Day, 11/27, 11/28 (following the Christmas Parade), 12/4, 12/5, 12/11, 12/12, 12/18, 12/19, 12/13, 12/19, 12/20, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, 12/26, New Years Eve.
You can be a part of this Christmas tradition by making a contribution. Just click on the black donation button below and contribute any amount you would like. 100% of your donation goes directly to the maintaining and growing the show. You can also visit the Dickens Welcome Center at 708 Wheeling Avenue to purchase Light Show and Dickens holiday souvenirs that support these projects. THANK YOU and MERRY CHRISTMAS!
When the switch is thrown on this year’s Guernsey County Courthouse holiday lights and music show, onlookers again will witness seasonal illumination amplified to a new scale never before seen in the local area.
The historic centerpiece of Downtown Cambridge comes alive with literally tens of thousands of colorful lights, synchronized to both traditional and contemporary holiday musical favorites.
The Courthouse lends its magnificent 1881 design to a intricately-choreographed 21st Century eye fest consisting of more than 8,300 control circuits for 85,000 lights, 15,000 of which will outline the structure’s unique architectural details. Sixty animated displays and a 23 Foot Mega-Christmas Tree with 6,400 lights complete the holiday spectacle.
The Guernsey County Commissioners, the Cambridge/Guernsey County Visitors and Convention Bureau, the Dickens Victorian Village, the City of Cambridge and AVC Communications have expressed their pride in this extraordinary enhancement of what has become a local tradition.
AVC designed the display, creating hourly shows that will play throughout the holiday season. Each presentation makes use of more than 8000 control circuits, each computer controlled in one-fourth-of-a-second increments and painstakingly synchronized to a holiday soundtrack. The show always features contemporary and traditional music, including kids favorites and spectacular display’s on the front of the courthouse and it’s front lawn.
Each hour features a wide variety of music. The show features children’s Christmas favorites, two song’s actually sung by Cambridge area grade school and two songs featuring local talent, one singing an original song about Cambridge! A show featuring contemporary Christmas favorites, a traditional/contemporary Christmas music show featuring the well known local saxophonist Gordon Hough is followed by the ever popular modern Christmas music show. This show is considered the crowd favorite.
Nearly a thousand man hours were needed to originally design the first display; install the lights and electrical systems; and coordinate the lights to the music in 2007.
Cambridge and Guernsey County invite you to come and enjoy the Dickens Victorian Village and the charm of this 19th century landmark, complimented by this dramatic display of state-of-the-art lighting technology.
The Guernsey County Courthouse Holiday Light Show is a gift to the community from local resident, Grant Hafley, and is a joint effort of AVC Communications, the Guernsey County Commissioners, the Cambridge/Guernsey County Visitors and Convention Bureau, the City of Cambridge and the Dickens Victorian Village.
Cambridge/Guernsey County Visitors & Convention Bureau
627 Wheeling Avenue, Suite 200
Cambridge, OH 43725
Phone 740-432-2022 or 1-800-933-5480
Email: info@visitguernseycounty.com
Web: http://www.visitguernseycounty.com
The Fall 2024 edition of the County Commissioner Association of Ohio (CCAO) County Leader publication featured an article written by Commissioner David Wilson. The article talks about the history of the show and features those that put in the work to make it happen every year! CCAO County Leader Fall 2024 Article
For three months in 2011, Ryan Pavlov documented AVC Communications, of Cambridge, Ohio, as they prepared and installed the Guernsey County Holiday Light Show. Please take a moment to view the film and see all the time and effort put into the only government building with a music and light show in the United States.
Q: How long does it take to program the show?
A: It takes approximately 18 to 24 hours on average to program every 2 minutes of music! The programmer gives “instructions” to the lights every 1/5th of a second. To tightly sync the lights and music, the programmer actually listens to the music at a ¼ of its actual speed… so very slow… one light fixture or sets of lights at a time.
Q: How much music is in the show?
A: Currently we have about 90 minutes of Christmas music before the songs begin repeating!
Q: How many lights?
A: Frankly, we have lost count! But, we do know for sure that there are more than 95,000 individual lights used in the show of various types. 15,000 are use just to outline the courthouse in white alone!
Q: How many feet of cable is used?
A: We use more than 3 miles of wiring of different types, both power and control cables. What you may not realize is the some of the display, the wreaths hanging on the US Bank building for example, are controlled using wireless controllers! We transmit the instructions to the lights “over the air.”
Q: How does this thing work?
A: Very well most of the time! It’s all run by a computer. We tell the computer what instructions to give the lights for each song, what songs to play in which order, what time to start and stop. It does all the rest!
Q: How many control circuits does it take to control the lights?
A: It takes over 68,786 separate control circuits. Some light fixtures take more than one each. For example, some floods have three control channels. Our newest floodlights have 18 channels each! Yes, every channel has to be told what to do every second the show is on… even if it’s just told to be “off.”
Q: How long does it take to set up?
A: This is a tough one to answer. We start setting it up in September and work on it through October for the first Halloween show in mid-October, then finish adding Christmas elements until the Christmas show starts November 1st. That right, we go from Halloween to Christmas in less than 24 hours! Generally it takes 5 people working on it, along with our regular job duties, so it’s hard to put an hourly number on it. Lights are put up during the day and tested after dark.
Q: What all is included in the display?
A: The display includes 42 LED Flood lights, two twenty three foot plus animated Christmas trees, one with a 4 foot tall star on it. The courthouse windows feature 36 custom made “scenes” and with all of the other characters and scenes on both the courthouse and the lawn adds up to 60 animated displays! There are also more than 38 large snowflakes, 600 feet of rope light, two robotic flood lights and 23,600 Pixel bulbs!
Q: How much electric does it take to run it?
A: Believe it or not, the Christmas light show SAVES money verses the lights that used to outline the courthouse a decade ago. The old lights were incandescent, large, static white lights that took a lot of electricity. The light show is mostly LED lights that use far less electricity thus save the county money on their electric bill!
Q: How do you make all the different colors?
A: Every color is made from 3 basic colors… Red, green and blue. We mix those three colors electronically to create the color we want. We change the brightness of the colors and the intensity of the color to make all of the different variations. It’s a lot like mixing paint colors, with lights!
Q: Who started the light show?
A: The Courthouse Christmas lights and music show was the vision of Grant Hafley, former owner of AVC Communications, which operates 6 local radio stations. It was his idea to create the show to compliment the Dickens Victorian Village by giving visitors something to enjoy downtown in the evening. He did the original engineering and design for the show and paid for the original display himself as a gift to the community which had supported his business more than 30 years. Today, AVC Communications continues to be the driving force behind the show, maintaining and growing it each year with the help of donations from visitors and the community.
