Halloween at KHCC

Kenneth Maldonado, 9, waited near the gym of the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center on Oct. 25, and swore that he wasn’t nervous to walk through his first haunted house.

When the door opened, Kenneth, dressed as a vampire in a dark velvet cape, plunged into a dark maze. Screams echoed as limbs reached around barricades. Soon an alien creature approached him. A ghoul followed behind Kenneth with a machete-like weapon. Around the next corner, a ghost dangled a head from his clenched fist. Near the end, strobe lights flashed as fake blood dripped on Kenneth and his family.

“I was laughing,” Kenneth, a PS 360 fourth grader, said after leaving the gym.  “I think the best part –– well the only thing that was weird, was when they touch you and then a spider web fell in my face and I couldn’t see.”

A line dangled outside of the gym for most of the Kingsbridge Community Center’s annual Harvest Festival and Halloween Haunted House on Oct. 25. While KHCC’s Teen Center manned the maze, students in Horace Mann’s School’s Diversity Club and Service Learning Team were in the cafeteria entertaining community members and dozens of students in the center’s after-school program with treats, games and arts and crafts projects.

A pirate, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, Mario from the videogame Super Mario Brothers, Spiderman, a ghost and Ariel from The Little Mermaid vied for seats in a game of musical chairs. The kids ran around an oblong seating arrangement, laughing until Horace Mann students stopped singing pop songs such as Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” and Justin Beiber’s “Baby.” A policeman was the last contestant sitting.

Several students picked out costumes donated by Horace Mann. There was a wide variety of cartoon characters, demons, princes and super hero outfits to choose from. 

Sincere Johanson, a third grader at PS 360, tested out his “ninja stars” after donning a sleek, black martial art costume with red trim.

He chased his friends, pretending to hurl the fake spikes at them. Sincere said he was eager to wear the costume.

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