Posted Wednesday, October 28, 2009 --- 5:45 p.m.

Halloween is just around the corner and it seems like everyone is getting into the spirit, including the staff at one local elementary school.

For a group of elementary school students today, what was billed as a lesson on how to stay safe for Halloween turned into something a little more thrilling!

Faculty and staff at Lodi Elementary pulled a Halloween trick on their students that turned into a real treat, a highly choreographed performance of the classic Michael Jackson dance "Thriller." Putting together a secret performance of this magnitude required a lot of coordination, as well as a lot of practice.

"We started it about two weeks ago. We figured out that we put over 24 hours of practice in after school, before school we had practice and then people just spent hours at home trying to figure it out then working on the timing, how we were going to come out and all of the stage stuff came out later."

The performance was intended to be a little bit of fun before a long weekend of trick or treating but staff used the opportunity to teach their students a lesson.