It’s a Halloween display two decades in the making.
Tucked away on a leafy street in Ottawa’s Glebe neighbourhood, Lisa Sullivan’s home can be seen from two blocks away at night. There are multicoloured lights, ghoulish faces, strange noises and all the other trappings of a modern haunted house.
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Just getting the lights on takes several minutes each night, but Sullivan doesn’t seem to mind. She started her collection more than 20 years ago and it’s only grown since then. She normally starts putting the decorations out in early October.
“I start around Thanksgiving and do a little bit at a time,” she said.
There was a theft a few years back, and the family lost several of their decorations including one of the first skeletons in the collection.
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But Sullivan told Global News that she has no immediate plans to scale back the annual tradition — although her husband wouldn’t mind regaining the storage space taken up by the witches and warlocks that live in their garage for most of the year.
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Several pieces with significance are hidden amid the collection, including an “old, mouldy” trio of ghosts tucked away at the back. For Sullivan, they have come to represent her three children, all of whom were born after she started her Halloween tradition.
Nowadays, the kids and their friends dress up and “haunt” the display at night, popping out to scare unsuspecting passers by.
Another special item for Sullivan is a tombstone and spooky mask that have pride of place near the front of the lawn. Sullivan’s father, who worked as a stonemason, crafted them for her before he passed away.
Sullivan confirmed that Halloween trends have changed over time. One of her most recent acquisitions is a zombie, similar to the ones seen on AMC’s hit The Walking Dead, which hangs from a tree and is motion activated.
On Halloween night itself, hundreds of kids will climb the steps to the house — if they dare. But the lead-up to Halloween night will likely be just as busy.
A few days after her house was featured in the Ottawa Citizen, a steady stream of visitors were making their way to Fourth Avenue to see the display for themselves.
“It’s beautiful!” exclaimed one man as he rolled down his car window to get a better look.
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