Enter the basement of the 78th Precinct — if you dare.
Halloween revelers won’t get arrested when they head to this Park Slope precinct, but they must brave a terrifying haunted house designed by officers to scare kids at every turn.
“[When] most people come to a police station, it’s not for good things. This brings the community into the precinct, they get to speak to the officers, it just brings the whole community together,” said Deputy Insp. Frank DiGiacomo, the precinct’s commanding officer. “Kids just love it — they walk in, most little kids start crying, but by the end they’re smiling.”
The haunted house is free of charge and, now in its third year, invites kids to tour “the hospital room,” “the hallway of doom” — complete with thunder and lightning — and an entry room that DiGiacomo said most kids run screaming from.
“We get more people running out of the first room than we do anywhere else,” he said. “If they make it through, they get candy.”
The haunted house, open for its final day on Monday from 3 to 9 p.m., has become so popular that people drive from as far as Pennsylvania to check it out, DiGiacomo said. On Saturday, the precinct saw about 800 people pass through the frightening scene, complete with anywhere from 13 to 20 cops dressed up.
The 78th Precinct isn’t the only haunted house operated by the NYPD. On Sunday, the 42nd Precinct in the Bronx hosted a “haunted cells” for kids, the precinct tweeted.
Patrol Borough Brooklyn North also tweeted that its second annual haunted house was ready to scare New Yorkers at 179 Wilson Ave. on Monday from 5 to 9 p.m. and Tuesday from 4 to 9 p.m.
