For two nights this week, the Independence branch of the Kenton County Public Library will stop looking like a library at all. Friday and Saturday evenings mark the 20th anniversary of Haunted Library, the free seasonal attraction that has transformed the William E. Durr Branch into a themed maze every October since 2007.
This year's theme, called The Confectionery Catastrophe, drops visitors into a retro 1970s setting built around a fictional abandoned candy factory in Smoat, Vermont, according to Kenton County Public Library. Attendees explore a town built within the branch, including a stop called The Gravy Smoat Diner and an auto shop, before entering an eight-minute immersive maze that relies on atmospheric lighting, sound, set design, and scents crafted by library staff. Per a library press release cited by Cincinnati CityBeat, the factory has been surrounded for decades by rumors of missing employees, strange experiments, disturbing creatures, and a mysterious underground cavern, and now that it has closed, its secrets are waiting to be discovered.
A Tradition Built From January Planning Sessions
The event's staying power traces back to programming coordinator Joel Caithamer, who created Haunted Library in 2007 after starting at the branch as a children's librarian. The Northern Kentucky Tribune has reported that library staff begin planning each year's theme as early as January, a lead time that helps explain how an in-house team keeps reinventing the attraction two decades running.
Past years have sent visitors through wildly different worlds, from a Greek mythology edition featuring Medusa's hair salon and the Minotaur's dungeon to themes built around cruise ships, goblins, fairies, museums, and an outing dubbed Colonel Bizerko's Land O'Fun, per the same outlet's reporting. That variety is part of the draw for returning local families, who know the setting changes even as the spooky-but-family-friendly tone stays consistent.
New Leadership Oversees a Milestone Year
This year's anniversary also lands during a leadership change at the library system. Dr. Denise Fritsch became executive director of Kenton County Public Library effective August 1, succeeding Dave Schroeder, who retired after 19 years leading the system and nearly 40 years of total library service. Fritsch, a lifelong Kenton County resident, previously managed KCPL's Career & Job Services Division and holds a doctorate in educational leadership from Northern Kentucky University along with a master's in library science from the University of Kentucky.
Fritsch said, per CityBeat, that the library is excited to celebrate the Halloween tradition and the staff who bring it to life. Haunted Library has brought creativity, imagination, and good scares to the community for 20 years, according to the library system.
Where and When to Go
Haunted Library runs the evenings of Friday, October 23, and Saturday, October 24, at the Independence branch, located at 1992 Walton-Nicholson Road in Independence. The branch, also known as the William E. Durr Branch, opened in January 2007 as a 39,000-square-foot facility with 25,283 square feet of public space, per Kenton County Public Library.
The attraction is one piece of a larger October calendar at KCPL, which this year also includes a movie pizza party, Halloween Bingo at the Erlanger branch, and a Boo Bash trick-or-treat night at the Covington branch, library officials say. The system has also taken part this month in BLINK, the Greater Cincinnati region's four-day light and art festival, hosting the interactive neuron light sculpture Connected by Koros Design Studio at its Covington location.
A Legacy Stretching Back to 1899
Haunted Library's anniversary sits inside a much longer institutional history. The library system traces its origins to 1899, established free services for all Covington residents in 1901, and opened a Carnegie library in 1904 that was among the first in the American South to offer racially integrated library services, according to library records. The county library district was formally merged and established in 1967.
That history now runs alongside a busy modern operation. During the 2023-2024 fiscal year, the system recorded over 2.04 million total item circulations, hosted 6,239 community programs with 148,081 total attendees, and served 119,029 cardholders, per library statistics. Two decades after a children's librarian dreamed up a haunted maze in a new branch, the event still functions as one small, staff-driven piece of that much larger civic footprint.
