As Halloween ends, spooky season is just beginning at Norman's new ice cream shop

Jimmy and Melissa Mikowski say they’ve never seen anything quite like what they’re attempting to do at East Village in Norman. They’d seen horror-centric coffee shops or witch-themed breweries in New York, but never a Halloween-style ice cream parlor.

The Ice Creamatory, a horror-themed ice cream shop on 12th Avenue in southeast Norman, opened late Friday, just in time for the Halloween holiday. The shop is the fulfillment of a life-long dream for Jimmy Mikowski, who’s been wanting to start his own business since he was 17.

“We’re just a mom and pop shop,” Jimmy said. “This is all hard-earned money from us. We don’t have loans or anything like that. We saved up all of our money. And we knew we needed to move out of New York, because things were becoming too expensive and too hectic. My wife brought up Oklahoma. I didn’t count it out. We took a trip down and we fell in love with it.”

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As is implied by the shop’s name — a play on words of the furnaces used to cremate the dead — The Ice Creamatory embraces a spooky aesthetic. A tiny black casket sits in a corner, with Gothic hangers for imitation swords and maces mounted on the purple walls above it. Opposite it is a TV that plays popular Halloween films like “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” and “Coraline,” and Jack-o-Lanterns with menacing grimaces greet customers at every counter.

“We’re both horror lovers,” Jimmy said of himself and his wife, Melissa. “We take annual haunted house trips, so we’ve been into horror for quite some time. When I was a kid, ‘It’ really scared the hell out of me, but once you get older, you just start getting intrigued by the movie. Pennywise is what got me into horror.”

Halloween fandom is also reflected in the names on the menu, which allude to horror classics such as “Friday the 13th,” “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “House of 1000 Corpses.”

One such menu item, the “Mrs. Voorhees Special,” features a slice of apple pie blended with vanilla or chocolate ice cream, and topped with whipped cream, miniature Graham crackers, Apple Jacks cereal and caramel drizzle.

The desserts are blended using special machines that look like giant corkscrews, which allow the Mikowskis to mix any combination of ice cream and toppings at a customer’s request.

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“They’re unique in the way that we can take any of our regular ice cream and make it soft-serve, or blend anything and make it a milkshake,” Jimmy said. “Again, I’m an ice cream fanatic, so when I really got my hands on them, I said, ‘Yeah, this is something I could definitely get behind.’”

Jimmy said he was inspired by his uncle’s business, Spoons, an ice cream and cereal bar, in Long Island, New York. He decided that combining two of his own passions — ice cream and horror movies — would help a similar business stand out among the many dessert shops in the Oklahoma City metro.

The Mikowskis sold their house in Long Island and said they have used the proceeds from the sale to invest further in the business.

Daniel Kneuer, who served a managerial role during the shop’s soft launch this weekend, followed his friends from their home in Long Island to Oklahoma. He said he was impressed by the kindness that construction contractors and local customers had displayed to them as they finalized the details of their opening with the city.

“Everyone’s been really friendly to us around here,” Kneuer said. “For (the Mikowskis), I think that really helped as they’ve tried to get things figured out. And with where they are already, I’m really excited to see what they do to keep things going seasonally through the spring and summer.”

About 60 people showed up during The Ice Creamatory’s first night Friday, Kneuer said. The next day, more than 100 people visited the shop from the afternoon through the night. The Sunday evening before Halloween saw another 50 people.

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The Ice Creamatory opened in a Norman shopping center plaza near a CVS pharmacy and a popular ramen restaurant. Most of the new shop’s customers so far have been families, although the Mikowskis hope that word-of-mouth will reach the college students who reside only blocks away.

“We want people to know that this is not a pop-up shop, that we’re going to be carrying this Halloween theme all year round,” Jimmy said. “Melissa and I are both lovers of horror movies, and they don’t stop coming out just because the season ends. So we’re trying to share that kind of spirit with whoever shares that enthusiasm as well.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Ice Creamatory in Norman will serve up Halloween frights year-round