For kids, it’s a ghoulish ship, with a mysterious captain, a creepy brig, a roomful of skeletons and treasure galore.
For the Gene Nastri Community School of the Arts, it’s a fun way to fill the coffers.
For Kevin Harkins, son of the nonprofit school’s founder, it’s a diversion from his New York video production company and a big labor of love.
Harkins, 40, and his co-worker and partner Yvonne Arnold, 32, have toiled more than a week transforming part of the Rosehill Community Center in Mukilteo into a Halloween attraction.
With a “Pirates of the Mukiltean” theme, the haunted house opened its doors Thursday evening. It will be open tonight through Sunday night and Oct. 26-30.
Thursday morning, Harkins, Arnold and a friend, Amrei Heitkoetter, were putting finishing touches on their creation, which puts a spooky spin on the “Pirates of the Caribbean” craze.
A wooden coffin doubles as the bar in a pirate saloon scene. Visitors following a maze will walk past webs and feel strands of fishing line brushing their faces. Ghostly images of local actor David Blacker, dressed as a pirate and filmed by Harkins and Arnold, will be projected on surfaces in the darkness.
Before they could fashion their fun-house ambiance, Harkins built a sturdy wooden framework. With that, they turned a large space into a meandering collection of nooks and crannies.
“Originally, I had bags under my eyes. Now I’ve got a full set of luggage,” joked Harkins, whose mother, Carol Harkins, founded the nonprofit Gene Nastri school in 1984.
Named for a former concertmaster of the Everett Symphony, the school operates out of the Rosehill Community Center and offers music and vocal classes to students of all ages. About 75 people are enrolled in classes there.
The haunted house is the school’s largest annual benefit event, raising as much as $11,000, Carol Harkins said. For 11 years, she and Kathy Sedy, who’s on the Nastri school board, have organized the Halloween attraction. Sedy started it a few years earlier, when the Rosehill center was run by a volunteer group.
“Kathy and I are getting older. I’m 64,” Carol Harkins said. “Physically, I just couldn’t handle it.”
This year’s haunted house is better than ever. “With the lighting and effects, it’s a huge upgrade,” Carol Harkins said.
That only makes sense, considering what Kevin Harkins does for a living. A graduate of Marysville-Pilchuck High School, he is the founder and chief executive of Progressive IMG Inc., a video and audio production company. His clients include the Discovery Channel, Nintendo, Ballet Bellevue and DKNY. For DKNY, the upscale clothier, he created video for a store on New York’s Madison Avenue.
He’s also made public relations videos for the hit Bravo TV series “Project Runway.” Arnold, who comes from Stuttgart, Germany, has her own film company, Bowling Green Productions. She recently filmed a documentary about zoos, and the bonds between animals and their keepers.
Kevin Harkins attended Edmonds and Shoreline community colleges, and later taught recording engineering at Shoreline. A classically trained musician, he plays bass, guitar and keyboards.
Although he was never a student in the Gene Nastri school, he rolled up his sleeves and put his creativity to good use. For Arnold, the project was a fun challenge.
“In Germany, they don’t have haunted houses,” she said. “All through it, we address all the senses, from sound effects to the smell of seaweed.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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