Our 2020 Yard and Home Haunt

I really didn't know what Halloween would look like this year. In 2019, our neighbours, who don’t celebrate Halloween, thought us odd, possibly dangerous, and likely deranged. We’d only just moved into our new home, and without time to prep, we could only offer a fun but modest yard haunt.

This year, we contended with the pandemic, a volatile US election, and again, our neighbourhood’s mild anti-Halloween sentiment. My expectations for this Halloween ran along the lines of a lackluster year, complete with a bit of "could you not" commentary.

But that, of course, couldn’t discourage a Halloween heart.

We sent the skeletons out the evening of August 31st, and the next morning, anyone who happened to pay any attention to our house saw two bonebags peeking out from the corners, creeping towards the yard. 

After that, the skeletons set to their work with gusto, moving every other day in the midnight hours. The neighbours woke up and found the scene changed 15 times over the month of September.

And they loved it.

My husband was slow to catch onto what a stir we were making and asked one day why all the children in the block were taking so many walks these days. When he saw them gathering in clusters by our house shrieking with delight, the connection clicked.  

But it wasn’t just the children. The adults came by too, and as soon as they learned the skeletons were not only moving but telling a story, walks by our yard haunt became a daily family excursion. We received a flood of compliments and thanks – my favourite below – and our little haunt became a point of comfort, connection, and entertainment in our community. 

One of my favourite memories from this year is a young boy telling me of all the changes he’d noticed and how he’d picked up on each skeleton’s unique personality, describing their goals and likes and dislikes. 

My dark heart was full to bursting.

On the evening of September 30th, with my husband out of town, I faced having to set up the whole of the yard haunt alone. Knowing this was a fool’s errand, I asked a few Halloween-loving friends to come over in the dead of night to help set up the big scene. To my delight, they agreed! No where else in the world could I have found a more creative and wonderful crew. I turned the set-up into a mini party, and with all of us social distancing and wearing face masks, we put the whole haunt together in good time. 

The next day all I heard were shrieks of delight as children and adults tore about the yard looking at the pumpkins and graves and delightful dead things now hanging about. 

And I realized I couldn’t stop. Not this year. Not when the pandemic had gutted us so much. 

So I kept building and adding, and every two days, something changed in the yard haunt. Then, in mid-October, our singing pumpkins took centre stage on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, and the whole of our area delighted.

I, meanwhile, was tired to my bones. 

Every year I swear up and down that I’ll be reasonable, try to do less, make my enjoyment of the season more leisurely and less frantic as I try to cram all of Halloween into so short a span of time. I thought this year would be a shoe-in, that I’d have no problem keeping that promise to myself because the pandemic shut everything down. It’s not like I could go out, so I’d have plenty of time, right?

Oh, little darkling. You should have known better.

In addition to preparing the yard haunt and constantly adding to it, I created more art, both for Iza October and for private collectors, hosted our annual pumpkin carving party outdoors, attended online and virtual Halloween events, gave lessons to neighbourhood children on how to carve their first-ever pumpkins, set up a voting booth to pick the theme of next year’s yard haunt (outer space won – I can’t wait to show you what I have in store for it), established a farm stand with free pumpkins, and taught dog training lessons (okay, this last is not a seasonal pursuit but an everyday vocation).

Every day was a full run, and I never quite caught up. 

But I did get my very first trick-or-treaters. 

Last year, my orthodox jewish neighbour brought his sons by to trick-or-treat, which was a huge highlight of my year. They were my first-ever trick-or-treaters. This year, I got groups! They came by in vans and piled out of their guardians’ cars to come trick-or-treat at our house before climbing back into the vehicle to find other neighbourhoods offering candy. They made a special trip just to visit our house on Halloween. 

Our covered entry stood open to them, candy ready for collection and seemingly unguarded. They screamed at the scares we had set up – a spider that drops, a scarecrow that leaps, a skeleton cat that shrieks, and more – and yowled when we banged on the door to give them one more jump. I had so much fun, even if I couldn’t greet them in person. 

And then, after all the Halloween fun came to close, the skeletons and I stole outside one more time in the dead of night and secreted the yard haunt away. The next morning, our house was as ordinary as the others, and gone was the magic that had held so many spellbound for the last two months. 

Well, until next year, anyway.