Cranston’s CYO isn’t the only nonprofit group to achieve astonishing success when it comes to raising Halloween cash. Here’s a look at two others, one big, one tiny.

The Rhode Island chapter of the International Special Effects Society, made up of caterers and many of the folks who make up the local special-effects industry, from lighting designers and production companies to people who provide tents and costumes, has been teaming up with the Royal Arts Foundation to hold Halloween balls at Newport’s 60-room Belcourt Castle mansion.

Last weekend’s balls marked the third year in a row that designers took the Gothic castle on Bellevue Avenue in Newport and made it stunningly eerie for their costume-studded Halloween bash.

“We cobwebbed everything, and decorated several of the rooms to make them even more haunted-looking,” says Rocky Toomey, vice president of the East Providence-based Future Affairs Productions and the director of this year’s event.

At $75 a ticket ($95 if purchased at the last minute), the 200 people who turned out for Friday night’s festivities and the 400 who turned up Saturday night not only provided more money for charity, but also made for much fun, says Toomey.

“The costumes were incredible. There was one group who came in as those little green Army men that we used to play with when we were kids. They were all in green from head to foot, and when they struck a pose, they stood up on green platforms like the ones they’d be standing on” if they were plastic toys.

There were busloads of people from as far away as New Jersey and Boston, as well as an actual count and countess from Europe who are friends of Harle Tinney, Belcourt’s owner, and who happened to be in town.

Toomey said he still didn’t have the totals for this year, but estimated that it would surpass the $55,000 raised last year. After deducting for expenses, ISES made donations last year to a homeless shelter in Providence, the Boys and Girls Club of Newport, and the Search Foundation, which helps to support people in the special-effects industry faced with catastrophic losses.

Not forgotten was the Harry Potter Halloween Charity Party that 11-year-old twins Alyson and Caryn Rickert of Smithfield have been staging, with the help of their parents, for the last six years at the North Scituate Community House on West Greenville Road in Scituate.

Drawing from the Harry Potter books and movies, the family this year once again invited classmates to a hall with fake shops where kids could pick up light-up wands; a potion room where they could make drinks; a Great Hall where they could feast on pizza; and a spooky basement bedecked with spiders, strobe lights and a light machine. There was even a trip through the graveyard behind the community house.

The twins’ mother, Catherine Rickert, said there was a bowl at the entrance where children and their parents could drop donations. Some $305 was raised, all of it going to the Rhode Island chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.

“We thought that this would be the last year,” the mother said later. “But everyone had such a good time we’re thinking of doing it again next year.”

rdujardi@projo.com