With 5,000 eggs behind Wiscasset Community Center Friday night, they couldn’t all be golden. Most were orange and black, and holding goodies for the approximately 100 children who found them in the Parks and Recreation Department’s Halloween Raven Egg Hunt..

But a blue-hooded 6-year-old, Wiscasset’s Joseph Cooper, found one of the golden few, in what he called “the egg field.”

As always, the after-dark event was flashlit and fast-paced, with friends calling updates to one another and their accompanying adults offering suggestions for where to look. Kathy Fuller of Westport Island and daughter Vanessa Schutte of Wiscasset had eight children to keep track of, including family members and members of a youth group.

Back inside the community center afterward, Fuller said the event was safe and well-run. “We went out with eight and we came back with eight,” she said, smiling.

Her granddaughter Rory Leeman, 6, of Woolwich, sitting nearby on the lobby floor, was smiling, also, as she opened one black-and-orange egg after another.

She collected many, as did Charlie Perkins, 5, of of Dresden. Perkins, joined by her mother Sabra Perkins, attended as Cleopatra. “Because I wanted to and she’s pretty,” the Dresden Elementary School student said when asked about the costume choice.

Outside, before the hunt started with a countdown and the lowering of a line of caution tape, she shared her strategy. “Putting my flashlight down and looking for orange or black eggs,” she said.

Later, Cooper, alongside his mother Meaghan Cooper, shared his experience finding a golden egg. “I ... took my time and ... I used ... my flashlight and I found the golden egg first,” he said. “I saw it right between the other eggs. And I was happy because I found it first,” he added.

The golden eggs garnered cauldrons of candy for the participants who found them, Bob MacDonald of the recreation department said. He and the event’s volunteer witch, Dresden’s Erin Middleton, joined families on the hunt. The two both serve with CLC Ambulance; he, as an emergency medical technician; she, as a paramedic.

Middleton, an experienced actress formerly with Edie Doughty’s troupe in Bath, enjoyed her first year in the witch’s role. “I hope I get to do it again.”

Her witch’s dress was reused from outings she and her mother Jean Goodrich of Bath have made to Steampunk gatherings that feature costumes combining industry and fantasy.

The recreation department’s series of Halloween events concludes Oct. 31 with the Ghost and Goblins Parade. Lineup is at 4 p.m. at Wiscasset Elementary School on Federal Street.