Halloween is homeowners’ time to shine
The Halloween decorations in the front of Candy Fetsch’s brick house in Hangman Valley look pretty harmless. A few tombstones are scattered among well-kept grass and colorful flowers. There are a few fake spiders hanging outside her door.
But inside, where the candy is kept, is a house that has been transformed into an old, creepy mansion, complete with an animated zombie butler to greet trick-or-treaters at the door. Fetsch, who is a Halloween fanatic, has been decorating since Oct. 1, turning five of the rooms in her house and her hallways into a ghostly paradise. Each room is themed and filled with props: hanging decapitated heads, dusty old bottles, rats, snakes, bats, spiders, a skull collection, and two perfectly somber gray and black cats resting warily on cushions.
“The food will be haunted, too,” Fetsch said with a little spookiness in her voice. Every year she must anxiously wait for the beginning of the month before she will allow herself to decorate. She does all the decorating on her own. Her son and daughter are bored with the decorations and only go as far as helping her with the boxes, she said.
A teacher at Freeman, Fetsch encouraged her students to trick-or-treat at her house. The neighborhood pays a security company to patrol the neighborhood for the event to ensure a safe environment.
A few of her students will be in the small haunted maze in her garage, jumping out of things and being scary, of course. She tries to add something new each year.
“It’s fun to keep up with new stuff,” she said. “It’s my challenge.”
In north Spokane, Kara Biallas’ house was just as festive, if somewhat misleading. In the front yard, a smiling pumpkin and some green spider webs cascading down from ledges made for some happy, welcoming decorations. In her backyard, a gruesome spectacle awaits trick-or-treaters.
To get to Biallas’ huge orange bucket of treats, candy seekers will have to enter through a foggy, black-lighted garage, and trek through a maze haunted by a bloody butcher, a cage filled with people clamoring to get out and a spooky cemetery.
Biallas came up with the idea for the haunted maze after her daughter Talayah, 3, asked to celebrate Halloween at home. Normally, Biallas makes a trip to Las Vegas for the holiday.
“We tried to plan something big for her,” Biallas said. Talayah will turn 4 just before Halloween, so the night will be a birthday party for her and her friends as well.
“She is loving it,” Biallas said. “She’s not afraid of anything.”
Over in Liberty Lake, subtlety means scary for Ryan Mulligan.
Although, his front yard is covered in decorations – tombstones, life-sized figures, skulls, spider webs, purple and green lights – the scariest part of it is what you don’t really notice at first. Like the subtle movement of the vulture buried in a tree, holding an eyeball in his beak, his head cocking back and forth. An animated skeleton clanks creepily when you least expect it, and monsters peer from behind the backyard fence. A headless horseman hides in the tree on the sidewalk.
The creepiest may be the grave digger, a life-sized hunchback figure standing in the center of the yard holding a shovel that moves just a bit. Shaggy, long white hair covers a face with bulging mechanical eyes that move ever so slightly.
“Yeah he’s pretty creepy. I’m surprised he doesn’t scare the kids,” Mulligan said.
Mulligan’s sons help him put up decorations each year. His youngest, Shawn, 5, points out all the decorations he helped with, like the tombstone they made together. Halloween is one of his favorite holidays. He said his friends sometimes get scared of the decorations. But, does he ever get scared?
“No,” Shawn said before reflecting a moment. “Sometimes, but not very often.”