Where Dracula wouldn’t stand a chance

Safe haven, family fun at venues that take fright out of Halloween

‘‘At a young age, it’s a little bit harder for kids to realize the difference between fantasy and play, and what’s real or not real,” said Silver Spring resident Yvette Malcioln, who was dressed as a renaissance woman. Her daughter, 5-year-old Michelle, came dressed as a mermaid.

The hall of the Georgia Avenue church was transformed into a haunted house where the most sinister features were brains made out of pasta, okra standing in as dragons’ claws and carrot sticks posing as witches’ fingers. Visitors to the church’s second annual ‘‘safe night,” intended for children age 12 and younger, were asked to leave the gruesome masks and accessories that often come with the holiday at home.

Richard Hopkins, a Gaithersburg resident and member of the church who helped with the party, said his vampire costume last year would not be allowed at the gathering, which was meant to get families together, not to scare.

Rebecca McGinnis, a co-organizer of the event with fellow church member David Renfro, said she looked to the kids in the church to determine ‘‘what was, or wasn’t going to freak them out.”

‘‘Too often you just go out into the neighborhood for the trick-or-treating, and you see the blood and the swords and things,” McGinnis said.

‘‘You won’t see any Draculas or Frankensteins here,” Renfro said. ‘‘No knives, guns, scarred faces.”

Burtonsville Baptist Church will hold a similar event for those not participating in the door-to-door candy hunt 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. today, with a hayride, face painting, moon bounce and no scary costumes — no witches, no monsters, no provocative getups — allowed. The church has been holding the event since about 1999, said Kevin McGrath, a Burtonsville resident and trustee with the church.

‘‘Unfortunately, in our society today, there are a lot of people out there who want to hurt kids. We want to provide a safe place where they can come, and have no problems with that,” McGrath said.

T.J. Penkin, who works at Costumes Creative in Silver Spring, said it was usually the parents who wanted to go ‘‘safe” on Halloween. Toy guns, swords and masks sold at the store were the most popular items for youngsters year after year, he said, and declaring them taboo only made them more desirable.

‘‘It’s the idea of, every child wants to play with matches, because they’re not allowed to,” Penkin said. ‘‘If you come to the store, without fail, almost every child will go to the guns at least once.”

Both boys and girls wanted the most popular costumes of the year — pirates and ninjas — Penkin said, adding that it was rare to see a child ‘‘freak out” over something at the store, which boasts a showroom of more than 20 mannequins, some in what could be considered scary garb.

Melissa Polito, mother of 4-year-old John, or Obi-Wan Kenobi of ‘‘Star Wars,” said events like that at United Methodist are important for more than their prohibition of scary costumes.

‘‘We can let him go and he’ll stay out of trouble ... for the most part,” said Polito, who was dressed as a firefighter at the ‘‘safe night” along with her husband, Nat, before asking her son John to put down his light saber. ‘‘This provides an environment where we know everything in here is fine for him.”