Heritage Woods to host drive through haunted house

Oct. 27, 2020 | Ryan Feyre

AGAWAM – Heritage Woods Senior Living will host a free spooky drive-through on Oct. 30 from 5 to 8 p.m. at 462 Main St.

The event, titled “The Haunted Woods,” will serve as a safe alternative for a community-building Halloween experience during the coronavirus pandemic, and will be open to the public.

“Usually every year, we do a haunted house that’s usually inside, but we can’t do that this year, so we’re going to bring it outside,” said Tim Bernardy, director of environmental services at Heritage Woods.

Bernardy’s plan is to build a haunted house outside the back of the main Heritage building where a mix of community volunteers and Heritage staff workers will be dressed up in different costumes for various live scenes. Upon arriving at the building’s portico, which will be decked out in Halloween decor, vehicles will be directed inside the “Haunted Woods” one at a time for organization and safety.

According to Heritage Woods Marketing Director Nicole Wallace, past haunted houses at Heritage Woods have featured different themes including, a guillotine scene, a psycho bathroom, and a scary butler. The staff plans on bringing some of these scenes outside for this year’s event, as well as a few others.

“There’s going to be a witches scene, a graveyard area, a ghost area, lights, blow-up dolls, pretty much what you would see in a typical haunted house,” said Bernardy.

Despite the circumstances, Wallace believes that there needs to be some type of community-building experience during Halloween time, especially since families who’ve come to past Heritage events were asking if there was going to be anything this year.

“We’ve done it [the haunted house] the past seven or eight years, and that’s always gone very well, and been very popular,” said Wallace. “This year, we didn’t not want to do anything, so it was Tim’s idea to bring it outside … We didn’t want to disappoint.”

While the public is welcome to come to this event, Bernardy thinks that this year’s haunted house will be especially important for the kids in the area. “We usually do a trick-or-treat here, usually open for the public, and the kids loved it every year that they’ve been here, so it’s (the haunted house) basically for the kids,” said Bernardy.

There’s no official way to predict the turnout for this year’s “Haunted Woods,” but Bernardy said usually around 100 children visit these haunted house events at Heritage Woods each year. Children and families in the surrounding Agawam area are also encouraged to join in on the drive-through.

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