A Private Property Issue?

The morning The Star reported the closure of the popular Halloween destination, city officials called an emergency meeting with building and fire safety officials as well as the project manager of the haunted house.

The city then gave the manager the OK to rebuild the maze.

A popular haunted house in Simi Valley that attracts thousands of children each Halloween has been shut down because the city deemed it an unsafe structure.

Haunted Halls has been operated by Cindy Fike and her family outside their Sebring Street home for the past eight years. But what makes it popular — a covered wooden maze with steel poles, dark and spooky scenes, and volunteers that startle visitors — is the reason it was given a 72-hour notice Friday to be taken down.

Responding to an anonymous complaint, the city said the 1,200-square-foot “amusement building” didn’t have a permit.

Although it is a “great idea,” said Ted Drager, a building official with the city, the structure was a fire hazard.

Fike’s son, Kyle Killips, 37, is the mastermind behind the haunted house — he started it nine years ago with the help of his father.

The scenes — including a mad-scientist lab, a jail cell with anxious prisoners and an alien getting an autopsy — get better every year, Killips said.

After three weeks of building, the haunted house was almost complete when the city told him to dismantle it.

“It’s a real bummer,” he said. “We were going to throw everything at it this year.”
Since his plans have been thwarted, he hopes to revamp Haunted Halls into something else, but needs to find out what the city will allow.

There will be no maze, and it will only be open Halloween night, to coincide with a block party the neighbors are hoping to have, with the city’s permission.

Since it was on private property — his mother’s home — Killips thought it was a “temporary structure,” and not subject to city rules for buildings. The haunted house was always free and open to the public.

Frances Michielson lives across the street, and said the neighborhood was shocked to hear about it closing.

“It’s one of the haunted houses that everyone travels to,” she said.

Two of her children cried when they found out, she said.

Michielson started a petition to have a block party on Halloween night.

With more than 25 signatures, they hope the application will be approved by the Simi Valley Police Department. Early plans include families coming together for a barbecue and renting a bouncy castle for the children, Michielson said.

The haunted house takes about one month to set up, and typically is open for three nights leading up to Oct. 31.

It’s a way to connect with neighbors, Killips said. His favorite part is when he hears children laughing and having a good time.

“I end up giggling like a little kid, too,” he said.

Killips got the inspiration for the maze 10 years ago when he was taking his 8-year-old daughter trick-or-treating. They walked through a neighbor’s garage that was converted into a haunted house.

The next year, the Killipses had their first haunted house, a much more modest version of what it grew to be. Since its humble beginnings, he estimates about 20,000 people have walked through the maze.

It hit him hard when he got the notice to take it down. “I’m a big tough guy,” he said. “But I was having a rough time with it.”

Then when he heard the neighbors were coming together to put on a block party to try to keep some aspect of the haunted house alive, he almost cried.

Drager said it’s unusual to have such a sophisticated haunted house. He said the city would like to work with Killips so that next year, it would be a permitted structure.

Shutting down a haunted house was unfamiliar to code enforcement officials in other cities.

Sue Taylor, Ventura’s code enforcement supervisor, said officials have conducted inspections of haunted houses built in commercial spaces, she said, but not on residential properties.

Mike Hines, a code compliance officer in Thousand Oaks, hadn’t heard of the city shutting down a haunted house.

Killips said he has spent between $15,000 and $20,000 over the years collecting scary, lifelike figures and has added sensors, lights and pneumatic devices to bring the scenes to life.

But he also posted at least 10 fire extinguishers, used lighted exit signs, and had the expertise of an electrical engineer to construct the walls that protect it from the wind and weather.

His family owns Plastic Depot, a custom acrylic fabrication store in Burbank that has connections to the film and TV industry. That’s how Killips, a manager, acquired a realistic side of beef to hang in the haunted butcher shop display.

He said he has tried to switch it up every year.

In whatever scene he creates, he would like to use two popular figures — a ghoul the neighborhood children named George, and Chucky the skeleton, who pops out of a coffin.

“We’re going to have something good,” he said.