October is the most wonderful time of the year for Jenny Kliparchuk.
The Deer Ridge resident said she first learned about Halloween after her family came to Canada from Chile in 1975. Chile doesn’t celebrate Halloween, so she was a little confused when kids in strange costumes showed up at her door on Oct. 31 asking for candy.
Kliparchuk said she soon started making her own costumes and decorations, a habit which she revived about 15 years ago when she threw a house-wide Halloween party for her kids. Now, every Oct. 31, she transforms her home at 57 Delage Cres. into a phantasmagoria of horrors complete with special effects and costumed performers.
This year, Kliparchuk has turned her garage into a witch’s living room, complete with throw-rugs, books, shelves, candles, and standard-issue dead-guy-in-a-rocking-chair. Sharp-eyed guests might notice a witch’s hat with a purple feather trim, a rack of vintage glass jars of poison, and a witch (played by Kliparchuk).
Kliparchuk said she started planning this display back in September and dipped into her many, many boxes of props to pull it off.
“It’s an obsession!” she said, with a laugh, about her Halloween hobbies.
“I really get a kick out of it.”
Kliparchuk was one of the many St. Albert homeowners who built elaborate Halloween displays this month. The Gazette put out a call on social media for such Halloween homes and has compiled the results into an online map.
Mini theme parks
Kliparchuk’s home was one of three exceptional Halloween homes The Gazette visited this month.
Leo Nickerson students have no doubt noticed the army of darkness rising out of Kevin Wilson’s yard at 6 Sycamore Ave. in recent weeks. Just a few paces from the school, the yard as of last week was home to skull-rattling skeletons, numerous tombstones, a mock water tower, two zombie doctors performing involuntary surgery, a hulking brute with a mallet hand and a rotary saw, and a 12-foot-tall animatronic skeleton knight that moaned and swung a broadsword as it flashed with inner light.
Wilson said he’s been putting on Halloween displays for about nine years, having done similar displays before back when he was in Winnipeg.
“I’m an airbrush artist and I do a lot of motorcycles,” he said, and all the skulls and Grim Reapers he was asked to paint sort of drove him toward Halloween.
Wilson said he sticks with a zombie theme out of his love for The Walking Dead TV show. Many of the props in it, including the surgical room, tombstones, and chain-link fence, were handmade.
“This is my Christmas!” he said of Halloween.
“This is what I live for!”
A small crowd of kids young and old was checking out Alisia Perrault-Werner’s Halloween display at 7 Nicolete Court on Oct. 19. Included in it were a pirate shipwreck, a snarling animatronic werewolf, a towering skeletal pumpkin-demon lit by what was presumably hellfire, and much, much more.
“We call him Snoopy,” Perrault-Werner said of the werewolf.
Perrault-Werner said she loved scary movies as a child, so Halloween was a natural obsession for her. She and her family started making and collecting spooky decorations abut 20 years ago. The Halloween countdown clock in this year’s display was the first item in their collection, while the bear-sized spider atop the garage (dubbed “Charlotte”) was the latest addition.
Perrault-Werner said this year’s display (her seventh in North Ridge) featured a movie zone, a graveyard, a haunted corn maze, a witch zone, and a creepy carnival. The family started planning it last January and spent a whole week putting it up.
“But we love it! It’s fun,” she said, adding that the weather co-operated this year.
Perrault-Werner said she tries to keep her displays kid-friendly, and lets guests skip straight to the candy stand if they wish.
“We only made one (kid) cry last year.”
For the kids
Wilson said he puts on his display each year to bring holiday spirit to his street. It seems to have worked: he’s gone from about 40 visitors at Halloween nine years ago to 200, and now sees many of his neighbours putting up scary decorations.
“The kids love it,” he said.
Perrault-Werner said she and other Halloween homeowners she has met saw their efforts as a way to support their community.
“Every single person I’ve talked to has said how much the community gives back, how much they love it, and how much appreciation they get for it.”
Kliparchuk said she did these displays so that kids could experience the same Halloween thrills she did as a child.
“I’m 56 years old, but inside I still feel like a little kid when Halloween comes around.”
Visit our Halloween Decoration Map for a map of Halloween homes in St. Albert.
