By Spencer Sterritt

Fright night: iconic Nanaimo haunted house back from the dead

Oct 17, 2017 | 5:29 PM

NANAIMO — For the first time in 10 years, trick-or-treaters can have the wits scared out of them at Nanaimo’s famous Halloween House.

“We don’t do cute,” co-creator Melanie Kirk said about the hellish nightmare she built with her husband at their house on Townsite Rd.

First built in the early 90’s, it grew from a small display with graves and jack-o-lanterns to a winding path through a graveyard with dozens of different scenes and actors trying to make everyone jump.

After taking a break and working on the Beban Park Haunted House, Kirk said they’ve decided to downscale and are hoping for a “creepy cool” vibe instead of outright terror.

“We’ll have a couple of scenes and…it’ll be on a smaller path. I think it’ll look really cool, it’ll be neat and there might be some scares. Hopefully nobody will think it’s not scary enough and will just appreciate what we’ve been able to do with our limited resources and older age.”

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Though their return to scaring youth won’t be as elaborate, Kirk said it’ll still be spine-tingling and bone-chilling after 5 p.m. when the sun goes down.

Since 2000, Kirk has taken donations since people were insisting they pay to experience such appalling and grim scenes. She said over $25,000 was given to the Nanaimo Hospital Foundation over the years.

It’s been a lengthy journey to becoming one of Nanaimo’s premier Halloween displays.

“It was really slow the first seven to eight years,” Kirk said. “We’d have 50 kids or 100 kids. I remember the first year we hit 500 was probably 1998. Within the next couple of years it started growing exponentially.”

She said over the last six years of their display they were averaging 5,000 visitors flocking to take in the terror.

The passion for creating Halloween displays designed to horrify was sparked by a house renovation which left a sizable amount of lumber to be used for crosses and tombstones.

“Between that and my mom doing a Halloween display that really stuck in my head and the Roseanne show with their elaborate Halloween parties, we decided to give this a try. It just sort of snowballed and got bigger and bigger every year,” Kirk said.

The Halloween House gates creak open at 803 Townsite Rd. Oct. 31 at 12 p.m. and swing closed at 10 p.m.

— with files from Dominic Abassi

spencer@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @spencer_sterrit