Trick-or-treating is just the start of Halloween festivities in Brooklyn. To get into the spooky spirit, Brooklyndaily.com has collected the most haunted houses and the freakiest festivals:
Haunted House
The Bayview Community Center is being retrofitted to dispense candy and terror for its Second Annual House of Horror event in Canarsie.
Tots will cower before the haunted house’s blood-curdling cotton candy machine, and bellow with glee before the sheer enamel-devouring power of its well-stuffed candy bags.
Children under the age of 93-years-old are welcome, barring a history of serious heart problems — these haunted houses, with their ominously billed “mysterious rooms,” are unpredictable and pose a danger to the feint of heart!
Haunted House at the Bayview Community Center [5955 Shore Pkwy, between Rockaway Parkway and E. 102nd Street in Canarsie, (718) 968–9621, mgmilldev@aol.com]. Oct. 27, 7 pm. Free.
Spooktacular
Let your freaked-out flag fly at the Aviator Sports Center’s one-stop-shop for all things horrifying, the two-day Mill Basin extravaganza of evil Spooktacular.
At the spooky, abandoned airfield, you can explore a terrible teepee called the Tent of Terror; take a suspense-ridden spin on a scary passenger car named the Horrifying Hayride; and smatter yourself in fruity gore during a vicious feeding frenzy dubbed the Putrid Pie Eating Contest.
If that all sounds too horrible and strange for you, then take a lackadaisical stroll through the airplane graveyard’s pumpkin patch, and then decorate your pick with lovely paints provided courtesy of Mill Basin’s biggest recreation destination.
Spooktacular at the Aviator Sports Center [3159 Flatbush Ave. near Belt Parkway in Mill Basin, (718) 758–7500, www.aviatorsports.com]. Oct. 27, Oct. 28, 12 pm. $13, $18 door.
Halloween Parade
Merchants along Fifth and Seventh avenues will open their doors to monsters, ghouls, and princesses alike this Halloween, for what has grown to become one of the largest All Hallow’s Eve marches in the free world — the Park Slop Civic Council’s Halloween Parade.
The parade of petrifying people begins on Seventh Avenue near 14th Street and will be led by a caravan of candy-laden emergency vehicles, followed by Park Slope Civic Council trustees and — even scarier — elected officials, and a menagerie of monstrous puppets, made huge by a near-fatal zapping of radiation, and the pain-staking efforts of the Puppeteers Cooperative.
Rounding out the march will be the crazed and madly innovative denizens of Park Slope themselves, shrouded in all manner of heinous and charming attire, who can always be counted on to perpetrate a variety of mischiefs before the parade terminates at the Old Stone House in Washington Park.
Halloween Parade at Seventh Avenue near 14th Street. Oct. 31, 6:30 pm. Free.
Gravesend Inn
Through the study of ancient grimoires and forgotten texts, scholars have divined several theories regarding the origins All Hallow’s Eve, although many agree that the Celtic festival Samuin, when spirits were thought to seep into the land of the living, most closely resembles the lore surrounding our modern holiday.
But that’s going way back and, these days, you’re more likely to see a circuit board than a zombie horde on Halloween. Take the Gravesend Inn for example.
On Oct. 19, the Voorhees Theater on Jay Street will become a state-of-the-art haunted bed and breakfast called the Gravesend Inn, where the Theatreworks special effects company will utilize only the most advanced and malignant technologies to ensure your holiday stay becomes a frolic of fear.
Gravesend Inn at the Voorhees Theater [186 Jay St. between High and Nassau streets Downtown, www.theatreworkscitytech.org]. Oct. 25, 26, 27, 31, 6 pm. $6.
Haunted Halloween Carnival
Those malignant masters of the marionette at Puppetry Arts are hosting a Haunted Halloween Carnival, and they’re expecting a guest appearance from the biggest baddy in the galaxy, the dark lord himself — Darth Vader.
That’s right, if you and your kids can come to terms with the innate creepiness of haunted puppets, then you’re in for a treat.
Delight in the costumed antics of your favorite Star Wars characters or even bring your own Star Wars garb, and go head to head with the Dark Lord of the Sith in Puppetry Art’s costume contest.
Haunted Halloween Carnival at First Street recreation center of P.S. 372 [First Street between Third and Fourth avenues in Park Slope]. Oct. 27, 11 am. Free admission, paid activities.
Bamboo
The Brooklyn Arts Museum is going medieval this Halloween, with employees dressed as knights, princesses, and wizards in an event that’s sure to leave you BAM-boozeled.
The museum’s courtly entourage will be dispensing healthy-sized goody bags outside the repository of fine arts, while modern bards play lively tunes, foolish jesters tumble around, and kids play in the bouncy house and compete in the costume contest for coveted prizes.
Bamboo at BAM Peter Jay Sharp Building [30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Place and St. Felix Street in Fort Greene, (718) 636–4100, www.bam.org] Oct. 31, 4 pm. Free.
Reach reporter Colin MIxson at cmixson@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-4514.
