By Paul Thompson

Northeast News

November 1, 2016

KANSAS CITY, Missouri – The Historic Northeast once again flexed its Halloween chops on Monday, October 31, as thousands of area residents turned out for the 23rd annual Scare-It Halloween event.

The Scarritt Renaissance Neighborhood Association hosts the event, which takes place over several blocks along Gladstone Boulevard on Halloween night. This year’s event featured track-less toddler train rides, a haunted house, a food truck, a pop-up coffee/hot chocolate stand, an impressive array of decorations, and of course, plenty of trick-or-treating.

A highlight of the evening was the impressive Stevens House across the street from the Kansas City Museum, which is owned by Jeff Zumsteg and Jeff Linville. The home was expertly decorated with an ‘Elmwood Cemetery’ theme for the event, complete with a standalone reconstruction of the Loose Monument, a front porch done up like the Armour Chapel, and a striking replica of the Stevens Monument at Elmwood Cemetery. In his nine years of living in the Scarritt neighborhood, Zumsteg said that he’s learned (and embraced) just how important Halloween is to the community.

“We bought the house about nine years ago, and were kind of told that you have to do Halloween if you live here,” said Zumsteg. “Either you embrace it, or you act like you’re not home, which doesn’t work very well. We just kind of embraced it, and we get bigger and more elaborate every year.”

Scarritt Renaissance Neighborhood Association’s Halloween Chairwoman Lisa Donnici kept rough track of the number of visitors and the amount of candy distributed during the event, which ran from 5:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m.

“The number of people was nearly 9,000,” said Donnici on Tuesday morning.”Our best guess is that we had between 150,000 to 200,000 pieces of candy. There was nothing left over.”

After her second year in charge of the annual Halloween event, Donnici acknowledged that the October-ending holiday was once among her least favorite. Over the years, however, she’s warmed to the festivities that have accompanied Scarritt’s annual tradition.

“Now, next to Thanksgiving, I have to say that it’s one of my favorites,” said Donnici. “It’s remarkable what some people come up with.”

Donnici also appreciates seeing the citywide appeal for the neighborhood’s annual Halloween extravaganza.

“It’s great to see not just who you know as Northeast residents, but people coming from all over the city,” she added. “I love seeing that many people coming to our neighborhood.”

The event’s key partners included the Kansas City Museum and the Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund (NTDF), a city-funded program which supports and promotes neighborhood activities.

“NTDF has been very gracious to continue to increase our funds as we go through this,” said Donnici. “The grant we got this year was $8,000, but we also got a lot of other small sponsorships that were given to us by several businesses and several individuals.”

For now, Donnici and the rest of the event organizers are still decompressing, but she added that it won’t be long until the neighborhood reconvenes to find a way to top themselves in 2017.

“The committee is always thinking of ideas to make it better next year,” said Donnici. “In the next week or two, we will definitely have a follow-up meeting.”