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Monroe is well-known for its haunted history, from Hanna Cranna and the White Lady Ghost to famed ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren. Now the town will host Fear World, a scary attraction coming to Z-Topia in Stevenson this October.

Steve Bartlett, owner of Fear World, a Bridgeport based business, found his passion for horror as a child, while planning haunted displays with his father at their Fairfield home every Halloween. Over the years he has designed haunted houses, adding more elaborate props as he goes.

“Every year after November 1, I start planning for next year’s haunted house,” Bartlett said with a smile.

Fear World, a traveling haunted house, will open at Z-Topia, 1545 Monroe Turnpike, on Friday, Oct. 6, and run from 7 to 10 p.m. It will open for the same hours that Saturday and Sunday, and for every Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the entire month.

Private corporate parties can be arranged for on Thursdays.

Gates will open at 6 p.m., an hour before Fear World opens its doors to brave visitors. Though tickets will be sold at the gate, buying tickets online is recommended. For tickets, click here.

Tickets cost $20 and include a “Scare Cam” picture, a photo taken of groups during a scary moment inside the haunted house. There are also options to upgrade a ticket to a Fast Pass to get right in. Parking and entry to Z-Topia is free.

Food, music, shopping …

Peggi Gnandt, who is organizing Terror at the Dam, said The Parlor: A Pizza Joint will serve wood-fired pizza every night. Other food vendors coming on select days include Vazzy’s Canteen and Little Kernels kettle corn. Cotton candy and popcorn will also be available for purchase.

“We will have freshly baked apple cider doughnuts and pies brought from Oronoque Farms,” she said, adding there will be hot apple cider from Beardsley Cider Mill, hot chocolate and coffee.

A Haunted Beer & Wine Garden will be available for those age 21-and-older.

Z-Topia will have face painting on select dates, as well as a costume contest with cash prizes and gift certificates.

On the last weekend there will be live music by the Tony Ferrigno Trio and Badboy playing rock, classic rock and modern country on Friday, Oct. 27, and Igniter will play two sets of hard rock covers on Saturday, Oct. 28. No cover charge.

Vendors will include Readings by Kellyann, Mystify crystals, sage and more; Because I Soy So candles, Phire in the Hole organic hot sauces, That’s Cool I Need It 3-D Printed Models; Tumblers by Evmi; and Handmade Jewelry by Carolina.

Check the website for the latest details.

“This is going to be one jam packed month full of excitement, and something for everyone to enjoy,” Gnandt said.

Enter Fear World

Fear World is a 6,000-square-foot outdoor haunted house with animatronics, special effects and actors. Bartlett said it takes 50 people to operate with actors, builders, safety people and ticket-takers.

Bartlett said he has repurposed things for his haunted house, including pieces of old furniture his parents were going to throw out.

On recent evening, Bartlett walked through the haunted house with his girlfriend Drodrolagi “Rainbow” Smith.

Among the frights are a ghost prop that flies around and pictures that drop with an actor behind it.

The house is decorated in sections, including The Manor with hallways, a living room with a couch and a TV armoire and a wooden rocking chair that rocks by itself. An animated possessed girl pops up from a bed, and a possessed child emerges from a crib in a nursery with a shelf of creepy dolls.

Scary props will drop down onto visitors when they least expect it and some of the props spit a spray mist at passersby.

A centralized room amid the displays has different windows and doors that allow an actor to scare the same group in five different spots.

“This is going be a kitchen,” Bartlett said of one area under construction. “You walk through the refrigerator door and enter a meat locker.”

Fear World has a toxic area with a monster that’s eight-feet-tall, electric chairs and a spider wall on the way to the cemetery with a haunted mausoleum.

There is a torture chamber and a 20-foot claustrophobia tunnel that gently squeezes people as they walk through it, while making them momentarily lose sight of their friends.

“It’s so scary, some are allowed to bypass that section,” Bartlett said.

Fear World ends with the Carn-Evil, an area filled with scary clowns.

For parents wondering about bringing their children to Fear World, Bartlett said they should think of the PG movie rating.

“We’re trying to make it contained and over-the-top scary,” he said, while promising visitors will have, “a night of fear and fun.”

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Nonprofit groups are keystone community organizations in the Monroe area. Here are five local stand-outs.

Posted |Updated Fri, Oct 6, 2023 at 10:40 am ET

MONROE, CT — Nonprofit groups are keystone community organizations in Monroe area. Fortunately, there is no shortage of organizations to volunteer or get behind financially, and that need your help.

Here are five outstanding nonprofit groups you should know about in the Monroe area:

The Friends of the Edith Wheeler Memorial Library, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, unaffiliated with the Town of Monroe, whose purpose is to benefit the library. The Friends sponsors many activities, including periodic book sales and ongoing fundraising for the library. The Friends also provides supplemental funds to the library for books, materials, programs, and special projects. The free museum pass program at the Library is sponsored by the Friends. In addition to donations, the Friends of The Edith Wheeler Memorial Library are always looking for volunteers to help with fundraising and the book sale.

The Monroe Food Pantry provides emergency food assistance for people and families facing food insecurity in town. Through donations from grocery stores, monetary and in-kind donations from Monroe town residents, and volunteers’ fundraising efforts, the group strives "to consistently provide our clients with a wide range of healthy food items, including: produce, milk, eggs, frozen meat, and non-perishables."

The mission of Think Pink Monroe is to promote breast cancer awareness and education, and inspire hope, in the Monroe community. Through community efforts, the group has been able to raise significant funds for those Monroe families impacted by breast cancer.

Find out what's happening in Monroewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Monroe Volunteer Fire Department is a 100 percent volunteer organization made up of men and women of various ages and backgrounds who come together to provide firefighting and non-firefighting services. Members include college students, technicians, accountants, plumbers, truck drivers, career firefighters, EMTs, business owners, and others.

The American Legion Sippin-Winspur Post 176 of Monroe is part of the largest wartime veterans service organization in the US, advocates for better active-duty pay and improved housing for active-duty families, and ensures that the Veterans' Administration's medical system can properly care for veterans.

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Monroe has five registered sex offenders living in the town, according to the Connecticut Sex Offender Registry.

MONROE, CT — Before the start of the school year is a good time to take an inventory of who is living in your neighborhood. Monroe has five registered sex offenders living in the town, according to the Connecticut Sex Offender Registry.

The Connecticut Department of Emergency Services & Public Protection maintains the registry and updates information regularly, but information can change quickly. Information is often provided by offenders themselves as required by law. This is a useful tool to help you be aware of who's living in your neighborhood.

Law enforcement officials and researchers caution that the registries play a limited role in preventing child sexual abuse and stress that most perpetrators are known to the child.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the National Sex Offender Public Website, estimates that only about 10 percent of perpetrators of child sexual abuse are strangers to the child.

The Justice Department estimates 60 percent of perpetrators are known to the child but are not family members but rather family friends, babysitters, child care providers and others, and 30 percent of child victims are abused by family members. Nearly a quarter of the abusers are under the age of 18, the department estimates.

Find out what's happening in Monroewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Association for the Treatment of Sex Abusers, a nonprofit organization for clinicians, researchers, educators, law enforcement and court officials involved in sexual abuse cases, cautions that children do not face a heightened risk during the Halloween season: "There is no change in the rate of sexual crimes by non-family members during Halloween. That was true both before and after communities enacted laws to restrict the activities of registrants during Halloween. The crimes that do increase around Halloween are vandalism and property destruction, as well as theft, assault, and burglary."

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To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to [email protected].

MONROE — Public participation at Tuesday’s Monroe Board of Education meeting was supporters of Masuk football coach Steve Christy and assistant Eric Giordano, who remain away from the team on administrative leave.

“We’re now on Day 64 of what’s being referred to as an investigation into the culture of our team,” said Nicole Conti, one of 10 speakers on the football team’s situation.

“Prior to this communication, Masuk High School conducted a full and thorough investigation into these culture claims. They came up with absolutely no evidence.”

Around 100 people appeared to be at Tuesday’s meeting at Masuk’s media center only for public participation, including many current players in their jerseys. Parents, alumni and friends and family of the coaches made up most of the rest of the crowd. Only about 10 people remained after the public speakers got their time.

The board usually allows 20 minutes for public participation, chair David Ferris said, but members agreed to extend the time to accommodate three final speakers.

A couple of speakers expressed frustration that the specifics of the situation have not been revealed, nor a time frame on when it might resolve.

“’Team first’ is the mantra,” parent Marc Champagne said. “Unfortunately, I think for the minority of people that have come forward to complain against these two men, the theory of ‘team first’ is lost on them. They’re only interested in benefiting themselves, and they’ve endeared themselves to these coaches only to try to benefit from them on a personal level.”

Masuk opens its season Friday night at Killingly, the team that knocked the Panthers out of the CIAC playoffs in last year’s Class MM semifinals. Masuk is a highly regarded team in Class MM and received votes in the preseason GameTimeCT Top 10 Poll.

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The team has gone through the preseason with defensive coordinator Brian Halapin serving as interim head coach.

“What we’re doing to those (players) back there is a disgrace, to take away two guys who are supposed to be part of their everyday,” former Masuk player Anthony Bacarella said.

“They’re here to make those boys men. I’ve got news for you: This game, you’re going to be coached hard. You’re supposed to uphold a standard and do your job, and when you don’t do your job, your coach is going to tell you you didn’t do it. I’ve got news for you: 15, 16, 17 year olds, it might hurt your feelings.”

Christy, who did not appear to be at the meeting, coached the Panthers to playoff spots in his first two seasons at Masuk.

“The Class of 2025 has been with him, probably, since they were about 10 years old, if not younger,” Melissa Brownbill said. “Parents of these children, including those who are against him at this time, have lobbied Steve to be appointed as our Masuk football coach in 2021.”

Conti said that after accusations of a “hostile and intimidating culture” went to the board, letters of support for the coaches came from players, parents and alumni to the board and the investigator.

“My son and his teammates are the only victims to be found,” Conti said. “It is not the culture of their beloved sport to blame. Their season has been disrupted, a shadow cast on the program.”

Conti said neither board or investigator has interviewed Christy or Giordano.

“Thank you for wanting to keep our children safe and for taking allegations seriously," he said, "but now please allow our program, our children and our coaches to carry on and heal from this time of needless defamation.”

There was one parent signed up for public participation who wasn’t there to speak about the football situation, and he got to speak first. He was hoping for clarification on why his daughter’s school bus couldn’t pick her up on their cul de sac.

He stood up from the microphone. “Good luck with the football, guys,” he said as he turned. He got the first cheer of the night.

MONROE, CT — A legal opinion determining the one-acre-minimum needed to create a Special Design District applies to the district a property is in, rather than to the size of the parcel, allowed the Planning and Zoning Commission to approve a proposal for a new Starbucks coffee shop at 255 Monroe Turnpike Thursday night.

The property is 0.89 acres, but the Main Street Design District extends to the center line of Route 111, according to Attorney Vincent Marino, the town’s special land use counsel. This makes the district 1.4 acres, Planning and Zoning Administrator Rick Schultz explained.

Construction of the one-story 2,519-square-foot building with a drive-thru, patio seating and 30 parking spaces at the corner of Monroe Turnpike and Spring Hill Road was approved by a vote of 4 to 1, with Commissioner Leon Ambrosey the lone dissenter.

Ambrosey contends the town regulations say a Special Design District (SDD) must be on a parcel that is a minimum of one acre.

“I don’t know how this commission approves this when the parcel doesn’t meet the requirement,” Ambrosey said. “In order to do this, it should have New England character. This has no New England character,” he added of the building design. “So we don’t even have that. I don’t know how this commission can approve this.”

After the meeting, Schultz said the text amendment establishing the Main Street Design District, which gives flexibility to develop qualifying properties along routes 25, 34 and 111, was petitioned for by Solli Engineering LLC, which modeled it after the town of Newtown’s regulation.

Though the Monroe Planning and Zoning Commission’s past practice is to base applications upon the size of the parcel, Schultz said the commission adopted the MDD with the word “district” in it.

“We’ll have a public hearing to correct it, changing it from ‘district’ to ‘parcel’, which is consistent with past practice,” he said.

Chairman Michael O’Reilly, Secretary Ryan Condon, Commissioner Robert Westlund and Dominic Smeraglino, a commission alternate, voted in favor of the application.

A portion of the property at 255 Monroe Turnpike borders a dead-end section of Spring Hill Road that was discontinued by the town. The applicant agreed to provide access to 365 and 373 Spring Hill Road for those affected property owners by creating a paved driveway, which the developer will maintain.

Condon said agreeing to maintain the driveway went above and beyond being a good neighbor, as well as the agreement to plant evergreens along a fence to be built on its property, providing a more attractive buffer.

“I think after careful review the site size is adequate and it’s a good use of space for a business frequented by residents,” Westlund said. “A paved driveway provided to the neighbors, that in my opinion is generous on the applicant’s behalf. I’m in favor of it.”

“I definitely see both sides of this,” Smeraglino said. “I think the best interests of the town is to go forward.”

The main entrance for the Starbucks will be from Monroe Turnpike with a secondary entrance from Spring Hill Road. The applicant agreed to have proper signage on the property for the drive-thru, to make room for emergency vehicles and to extend a sidewalk along Route 111, connecting it to a Purdy Hill Road property next door.

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