Entertainment

Number 648 Humboldt St. is a wallflower. The nondescript gray stucco house hides from the street line, set off by a cement front yard that doubles as a driveway. But every October, the two-story home transforms into the belle of the Halloween ball, reinvented as the Humboldt Street haunted house.

 

Anthony Auriemma is the master of the house. To the delight of his neighbors, he has been creating a Halloween destination in Greenpoint for the past five years.

 

This year, the tableau starts on the roof with a devil and werewolf with arms outstretched menacingly. In front of the second floor window, the victim of a beheading crouches near a guillotine. Frankenstein and his bride guard the front door, bathed in strobe light. In all, roughly 65 figures adorn the façade of the building.

 

Auriemma adds a few figures every year, shopping the online sales after the holiday. This year, he debuted a homemade monstrosity: a pale head with yellow eyes was mounted on a frame that concealed a hose which allowed “blood” to spurt from the mouth into a barrel that looked to be overflowing with intestines. But eventually, the red coloring ran out, resulting in a pink-lemonade trickle. He approximated that he had spent  $10,000 on the entire collection over the past 15 years.

 

On Halloween night, the house attracted a swarm of trick-or-treaters. Auriemma estimated that he started out with 500 lollipops, 300 bags of chips and “I can’t even tell you how much chocolate,” he said.

 

A lifelong Greenpoint resident, Auriemma, 37, began decorating his parents’ house down the street at 672 Humboldt when he was young. When he married and bought the house at 648 seven years ago, he moved with his collection of store-bought and handmade Halloween decorations.

 

Auriemma’s decorating talent earned him the attention of the community. Local residents seek out the house on ambles through the neighborhood. Dog walkers linger on the sidewalk admiring the skeleton bride and groom, with red cummerbund, standing on the first-floor roof. Drivers slow down to check out three Dickensian ghosts in top hats floating from a stretched fishing line and snap pictures with their camera phones.

 

Quin Chia, a Greenpoint resident who dressed as Miss Universe 1988, stopped to take in the decorations and pointed out a posse of clowns on the roof. “I watched it at a sleepover and I tried to develop a fear of clowns, but it didn’t stick,” she recalled.

 

Cerissa Kondrotas drove down to see the house from Richmond Hill, Queens; her daughter Victoria, 4, was dressed as a good witch in black robes trimmed with purple leopard. Victoria slept in the car, exhausted from trick or treating, as her mother and grandmother, Georgina Monz, took in the sights.

 

“If one of those things were real and came at me, I’d ----,” Monz said pointing at a too-realistic Dracula statue.

 

Despite the abundance of ghouls and goblins, the real scare of the night came as Auriemma’s wife, Sabrina, came outside for a smoke and to chat with the visitors. In a “release the hounds” moment, Bruno, the family’s large but friendly rottweiler charged at the gates sending gawkers running for cover.

 

While Bruno sniffed about, Sabrina pointed out her favorites, a hanging bat and a figure she calls “Little Big Head,” a soft skeleton that quickly became a chew toy for Bruno. Her least favorite part is a ghost-print semi-opaque plastic wrap that covers the whole house. “I basically have no daylight for a month,” she said.

 

Sabrina explained that her husband came from a big family with many children and grandchildren, so entertaining kids was a part of life. Still, she’s impressed that his schedule allows it. To support his wife and their two children, Auriemma works two night jobs: as a mail handler and an automobile re-possesor.

 

“I don’t know where he finds the energy for it,” Sabrina said.

 

While many in the neighborhood enjoy Auriemma handiwork, Sabrina says the display has prompted some unwelcome questions. “People come by and ask if we worship the devil,” Sabrina said, laughing. “We’re Catholic. We’ve gone to the church down the street all our lives.”

 

Sabrina confessed that she was eager for her husband to take down the decorations and move them to storage in the garage, but she acknowledged that her reprieve would be short lived. The garage attic is split evenly between Halloween and Christmas decorations, and in two months, 648 Humboldt will be decked in Christmas finery.