NEWBERRY — Are you ready to have a spooktacular time this Halloween? The Newberry County Memorial Hospital will have you covered with its annual Safe Kids Halloween event, taking place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Halloween.

“The Safe Kids Halloween event will be behind the hospital, we will have bounce rides, have lots of games, free cookies and juice, tacos and hot dogs for sale (usually a dollar), got a DJ so there will be lots of hula hoop contest and limbo contest, and prizes for the winners,” said Brenda Riddle, respiratory therapist and Safe Kids organizer.

Safe Kids will also have the traditional costume contest. The age groups will be 0-3, 4-6, 7-9 and 10-12. The contest will begin at 6:30 p.m. and Riddle recommends arriving slightly before that if you want to enter.

“The prizes, we try to get something active, for unisex, or something educational. We will have a first and second prize for each age group,” she said.

Attractions at this year’s Safe Kids will include the haunted bus, the operation game that was there last year, sack races and bounce rides. There will also be plenty of games including, witch’s hat toss, ghost toss, go fish, bowling, pin the stem on the pumpkin and the pumpkin toss. There will also be plenty of prizes and candy.

Volunteers from both the hospital and the community will help run the Safe Kids Halloween. Riddle said they will have a lot of students from Newberry College as well as others, like occupational therapist students.

“Newberry College is a great help. They will send several students, 50 or 60 at least, they help with traffic, help clean up, set up,” she said.

Michael Smith, director of Student Engagement and Greek Life at Newberry College, said that at the moment they had two sororities signed up to take part in the event, and he imagines that the entire Greek Life community will participate, not to mention the non-Greek organizations that will participate.

“This is my first year seeing it, really excited to see it, Greek Life community actually looks forward to this every year. They ask about it at the start of the semester, they look forward to interacting with children, and some of them dress up as well,” Smith said. “This is philanthropic as well, giving two hours of their time up to bring smiles to children’s faces.”

NCMH has been holding this Safe Kids event for over a decade now, Riddle said each year they get several hundred in attendance.

“We do this just to have a safe place for the kids to enjoy Halloween, especially in these times, you need something safe. We just want everyone to be safe,”she said.

The City of Newberry Police Department will be present to make sure everyone is safe. Riddle does ask that visitors to not block the ER entrance, as it will remain open.

“Do not walk down the ER ramp, try to avoid that. So if there is an emergency the ambulance can come up and down the ER ramp,” Riddle said.

The Safe Kids Halloween event will have plenty of games for children to play and win prizes.
https://www.newberryobserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/web1_KAPenquinFishSling.jpgThe Safe Kids Halloween event will have plenty of games for children to play and win prizes. File photo | The Newberry

The costume contest will begin at 6:30 p.m. for children 0-12.
https://www.newberryobserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/web1_Random7.jpgThe costume contest will begin at 6:30 p.m. for children 0-12. File photo | The Newberry

By Andrew Wigger

awigger@civitasmedia.com

Reach Andrew Wigger at 803-276-0625 ext. 1867 or on Twitter @ TheNBOnews.