For the past five years, Erline Cardenas and her family have hosted Compton Horror Nights, a neighborhood haunted house and maze, designed to bring affordable entertainment to local families. But the popular Halloween event is struggling to open its doors this year amid a dispute with City Hall over permit requirements, fines and fees.
After seeing firsthand the joy Compton Horror Nights has brought to people in her community, Cardenas said she’s only motivated “to make it bigger and better” each year. A growing chorus of residents who’ve experienced it firsthand recently joined her appeal to Compton city officials to find a solution before Halloween passes.
The trouble started, Cardenas said, over the $5 entrance fee for adults (children are admitted for free). Once she was notified by the city that they could not charge attendees, they made the experience free and allowed visitors to contribute voluntary donations. When the city told them donations weren’t allowed, they waived all fees.
Still, the city’s Building and Safety Department put her on notice in early October that she needed to shut the fright fest down even after she submitted a special event permit application that included emergency procedures, a traffic control site map and a maze map identifying emergency exits. Her permit requests were already denied for the event.
Mayor Emma Sharif said she knows it’s caused a lot of frustration and, earlier this month, directed the city manager, Jerry Groomes, to check on the status of the event.
“No one wants to cancel a community event,” she told the event’s supporters who attended a city council meeting earlier in October. However, she said she worries about safety, stressed the importance of protocols and permits, and said that, unfortunately, Compton Horror Nights did not follow these expectations.
“I will never compromise when it comes to the safety of residents,” she said. “I would hate to see anybody come to the event and they end up getting hurt.”
Resident Tony Perez urged the council to find a solution to let Compton Horror Nights finish this Halloween season for the kids, something that wasn’t available when he was growing up in the neighborhood. As a kid, “If we wanted candy bars that were big, or we wanted a haunted house, we had to go to Norwalk, Torrance, or Huntington Beach,” he told City Council members at a meeting Oct. 6.
Perez told city officials that he’s appreciated having a neighborhood gathering place in recent years where families can celebrate together. “We want to put something together where it’s in our backyard, where those parents didn’t have to drive so far,” said Perez.
While the city has pushed to dismantle Compton Horror Nights, the attraction still has support from some council members.
“I don’t see why we can’t waive any issues and let them have their event,” Councilman Jonathan S. Bowers, representative of District 3, said during a council meeting this month. Bowers visited the site himself and described it as “a nice little community thing.”
Despite everything, Cardenas said her passion for creativity and love for her community never wavered.
She continues to post daily about Compton Horror Nights’ closure, gaining support from her followers and Compton residents in the process.
She continues to reach out to local residents and has support from actor Eric Finch and Konrad Parker, creator of Black Lives Made It, an inclusive horror screening & Horror Per D.E.I.M. organization. They will host a fundraiser for Compton Horror Nights on Oct. 30.
