Haunted House for Hunger!

Skeletons! Spiders! Monsters! Ghosts! Ghouls! And Goblins!

All of these spooky characters were found at the 10th annual Haunted House by Sophia Barrett and her family! For 10 years, the Barretts have turned their ancient stone basement into a Haunted House filled with freakish frights to scare anyone who dared to visit, and this year was no different when they held the event on Friday night, October 24th.

The spine-chilling transformation of their lair in Newton, MA, started 10 years ago at the suggestion of the Barrett’s daughter, Sophia. Parents Lisa and Dan quickly got on board and Sophia’s mother, a psychology professor at Northeastern University, has her grad students and postdocs use knowledge from experiments on fear to scare people in the haunted house. How cool!

So what does all of this have to do with hunger? Well, the Haunted House was originally created as a hunger-relief fundraiser, and each year the Barretts charge $5 admission to their guests for a full tour of the Haunted House, and ALL the proceeds are donated to The Greater Boston Food Bank. This year, they had about 400 attendees and raised enough to provide over 1,700 meals. Over the last 10 years, Sophia and her parents have raised enough money to provide over 10,000 healthy meals in total to those in need in Eastern Massachusetts!

In addition, Sophia has also saved money from her allowance and birthday to donate to GBFB on several occasions. Sophia and her parents are an inspiration and show  that there are so many ways in which people can help their community. Thank you to the Barretts for their commitment to GBFB’s mission to End Hunger Here.

From everyone here at Team GBFB, have a HAPPY HALLOWEEN! And remember, everyone has a role in ending hunger in our community.