Students Give Freehold Spooktacular Makeover

Walking around downtown Freehold last week Spooktacular committee member Barbara Kane said she was glad to see the windows transform into scary Halloween themed masterpieces.

Once again students from the Freehold Regional High School District and the Freehold Intermediate school put their artistic skills to good use painting everything from Charlie Brown and the Giant Pumpkin to Dracula and any other monsters they could think of.

Kane, who has been a member of the committee for more than 20 years said the work that started last week is something that has happened in the borough for decades. “It started on a pretty small scale but it grew in popularity over the years,” she said. “It was a resurrection of an old time tradition. We can trace it back to the 40’s of the teenagers of the borough high school painting in the late 40’s and early 50’s.

Even this many years later Kane said some of the original painters will still walk through town and talk to the students and share memories of when they put their creativity to spooky use. With some paintings taking a few hours to finish Kane said the artists had the support of not only their teachers and the committee members but also the local businesses whose windows they were working on. Downtown favorite Federici’s also donated 80 pizzas to feed the almost 200 volunteers who worked on the project during the day.

As the artwork went from sketches on a piece of paper to masterpieces on the windows Kane said she was proud to see the longstanding tradition continue at such a high level. “A lot of memories have been made on the windows downtown,” she said.