Monster Menagerie

          Halloween 2008

Halloween is a BIG event in my neighborhood.  We can expect 700 to 1,000 trick-or-treaters during the 4 hour event!  It was a big surprise on our first year in the neighborhood!

As it is, Halloween has always been my favorite holiday.  Our house is decked-out with all the creepy stuff that I can spill out on the lawn: headstones, severed limbs, bloodied swords… etc.

When growing up I lived in a rural place.  We had to be driven to a neighborhood to trick-or-treat!  I thought that if I ever I lived in a track home that I would make Halloween an experience for all who visited!   I like to play the sound track of Disney’s Haunted Mansion while candles flicker and cast shadows on the display of Halloween collectibles.

A little note about my headstones:  I originally wanted to copy the headstones that used to be at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.  At the time that I made the headstones (1995) the stones were removed from the Disney park and there wasn’t any list that I could find to copy the correct wording.  I made up the epitaphs on-the-fly.  I have since found what the original Disney headstones said and considered making a new set –however, those stones were filled with inside jokes!  The names were of Disney Imagineers.  I decided to keep my stones and replace them as they fall apart (they are made of practical board and very brittle right now). 

The tombstones in my graveyard are as follows:

• R.I.P.
• Here lies Uncle Walt not looking both ways was his fault (an obvious nod to Walt Disney)
• Poor Dave he didn’t know that there was a bear in that cave (similar to the Disney original “Dear departed Dave who chased a bear into a cave”)
• Here lies Art all in parts (I’ll put a sword with a foot right in front of this one)
• Here Lies Carrie she screamed when she got buried (I didn’t know that I would someday have a sister in-law of the same name)
• Here lies Phil he won’t lie still (a hand would be coming out of the ground in front of this one)
• Here is Amy a sweet little tart, her body is here but they never found her heart (this one has a motion activated skull mounted on the top that lights up and plays the theme of Halloween –the movie) –a new stone made from a cabinet door
• Dear departed Ned leaned out the window and lost his head –another new stone made from a cabinet door