While the costumes may change from year to year, Halloween remains basically the same each October: Kids (and some adults) dressed up carrying bags full of candy while strolling through neighborhoods at dusk.
Some local families, however, go above and beyond the normal Halloween activities to create lasting memories for their families, friends, and neighbors. From the latest technology to handmade props and costumes, these Centre Region families remind us why Halloween brings out the kid in many of us.
Carnival atmosphere
In State College’s Foxpointe neighborhood, there are two very different Halloween attractions within a five-minute walk of each other.
Bill Kerns invokes an old-school carnival theme at his home on Autumnwood Drive. He’s always enjoyed making things, and Halloween proved a good excuse to build some props.
“I kept saying I was going to make a coffin, and I finally did,” he says. “I just started adding pieces to it, and it’s grown from there.”
The Halloween setup now includes multiple tombstones, a guillotine, and a blood fountain. Each tombstone bears the name of a character played by horror movie legend Vincent Price.
Unlike others who put out decorations weeks in advance, Kerns has a strict policy of not starting to decorate until after school buses pass his house on trick-or-treat morning so as not to ruin the surprise for anyone who will be coming by that evening.
Friends and family chip in to help take the props out of storage and set up in time for the first visitors to arrive around 5 p.m. Kerns estimates that he has about 300 visitors per year.
Now more than 10 years in, he says he does not plan on stopping anytime soon.
“It’s a lot of the responses from people that keep me going,” he says. “We enjoy it, and it’s a good time for everyone.”
High-tech Halloween
While Kerns is decidedly low tech, Eric Stoner uses the latest in animation technology to create singing pumpkins at his home on Harvest Run Road North. A video of the pumpkins took off on social media last fall, creating a buzz for this year.
Stoner purchases regular pumpkins and uses a projector to animate them, creating the effect that they are singing along to a popular Halloween-themed song. For comparison, think of something you might see in a Pixar movie.
Stoner, owner of Nittany Entertainment, started the pumpkins as a way to build hype for his annual holiday lights show in December.
“My wife’s favorite holiday is Halloween, so I wanted to incorporate something for her,” he says. “I wanted to incorporate these things for the kids — there are lots of them in the neighborhood.”
Last year was his first doing a Halloween display. He hopes to add lights into the mix this year as a way to test out new ideas for Christmas. His Facebook page, “State College Holiday Lights,” has more than 500 fans and will include information about his Halloween and Christmas events.
As his events have grown, he says he needs to balance them against his obligations as a father and business owner.
“Timing is really the thing, and if we have time to do add more things in, we’ll increase it,” he says. “We do it all for the kids in the neighborhood.”
Preparations begin in early October, but Stoner says that researching new lighting techniques and technology is a year-round hobby for him.
“Some people like to fish, some like to hunt. I like to play around with lights and mapping animation,” he says. “When I’m stressed I work on that stuff.”
Cooking up some scares
You may have seen Michael Marx, or Chef Miguel as he’s also known, around town in his World’s Fare Catering food truck. After moving to State College from the Baltimore area five years ago, he and his wife, Jennifer, knew they had the opportunity embrace one of their favorite holidays.
“We never had kids when we lived in Maryland, so we kind of got out of being able to do it,” he says. “Now we have van loads of kids [visiting], and it’s something we like to do.”
The Marx family takes decorations at their Park Lane home beyond the norm, with Michael manning the outside and Jennifer taking the lead inside. Outside decorations include a fake dead body and skeletons hanging from trees, while inside, picture frames inside are covered with spider webs and toy spiders are suspended from the ceiling.
Michael has gathered Halloween supplies over the years, often from store-closing sales or secondhand stores. He says he never has a particular theme in mind and is not particularly handy.
“I built stuff out of chicken wire from a picture I saw,” he says. “I didn’t really know what I was doing. I built as I went, and it all came together.”
He is hoping to take his setup to a new level this year, literally, by suspending wire from the trees in his yard so he can run ghosts between them. He hopes to turn to a friend with a landscaping business for help scaling the trees.
“Stuff we have is good, but it’s all stationary,” Marx says. “I’m not a guy who can build a mechanical robot or anything like that, but this will be pretty cool if we can pull it off.”
While it might be tempting to turn trick-or-treat night into an event for the World’s Fare food truck, Marx says Halloween is not about making money for him. His children, Gabriel, 14, and Eliza, 12, enjoy posing in the yard and entertaining younger children who come to visit.
“It’s fun to see the kids get into it,” he says. “You’ll have eight kids get out of a van because they heard about us and wanted to come check it out.”
Ghoulish garage
William Rojas has always loved Halloween, but was limited in decorating options at his apartment in New York City. He and his wife, Estell, moved to State College in 1999, and, since then, have turned their garage on Quail Run Road into a haunted house. He estimates that he had about 140 kids and 300 total people stop by last year.
“The first year I had a Frankenstein mask and would come out and scare the kids a little bit,” he says. “Then we started getting 25, 35 kids, and it grew from there.”
He chooses a new theme each year and keeps it a surprise until trick-or-treat night. Past themes have included butchers and Ghostbusters, complete with a life-sized Stay Puft Marshmallow Man costume.
“We had a 350-pound guy in that costume for three hours shooting a marshmallow gun; it was great!” Rojas says.
Once word gets around that you have a haunted house, people are happy to give you their unwanted decorations.
“People give us all kinds of stuff … Christmas, Halloween decorations, you name it,” Rojas says.
Rojas does not have children and employs friends and family to help set up the haunted house each year. They also take videos that help capture moments they may miss during the craziness of trick-or-treat night.
“We stay open a half-hour later after trick-or-treat for stragglers, then we all sit down inside and watch the video and laugh,” he says.
Following the success of Halloween — and an influx of donated Christmas decorations — Rojas decided to host a holiday open house last year.
“We dress up as Santa and Mrs. Claus, and it’s a lot of fun,” he says. “One of the kids down the block told his mother that Santa will be at ‘Halloween house!’ ”
There’s family fun to be had across the region on Halloween. Centre Region Trick or Treat Night is from 6 to 8 p.m. October 31. For more information, visit crpr.org or call (814) 231-3071.
