Everett man’s Halloween display grows scarier each year

Published 2:17 pm Monday, November 9, 2009

EVERETT — Jain McCaughan doesn’t worry about putting up Halloween decorations. Her neighbor does the job for her.

Painted gravestones, homemade creatures and fake loose bones cover the lawn between McCaughan and Alan Gere’s homes at 21st Street and Oakes Avenue. “This is the best time of the year to be Gere’s neighbor,” she said. “I need not decorate. His display is so huge it bleeds into my yard.”

Gere’s Halloween display started a decade ago with just a few gravestones, he said. Every Halloween he tries to add a few new spooky props to his yard.

Cobwebs line the black fence bordering the yard. Skeletons, eerie music, flashing lights and Gere’s motorized and pneumatic creations transform the yard into a haunted cemetery.

“It’s interesting during the day and really creepy at night,” Gere said. “We have a lot of fun with it.”

A mechanical engineer, Gere, 42, prefers to build his own Halloween creations instead of using store-bought decorations.

“I can’t find commercial stuff that I like,” he said. “To alleviate that I make my own.”

Gere uses PVC pipe, chicken wire, expanding foam and newspaper along with other gadgets to build his spooky mechanisms. The work starts in August. He may use a few commercial props, he admits, but he’ll put his own twist on them.

“I’ll find a commercial item that I like and I’ll just butcher it,” he said.

The neon green mad dog in his yard used to be a reindeer. Gere cut off the antlers but kept the motor of the Christmas decoration. He used expanding foam to bolster the size of the body, added a snarling dog’s head and the decoration was ready to be part of his Halloween display.

New to the yard this year is a skeleton cowboy named Lester that pops up over the top of his gravestone. Hector, a candy-corn-tie-wearing skeleton is visible when a coffin door opens. His final addition this Halloween is a corpse bride that he suspects will elicit screams from visitors when she jumps from her coffin.

His favorite creation by far is Rotisserie Guy, a rotating charred skeleton and leg tied together over a fire pit.

“There’s a lot going on,” Gere said. “If you stand here long enough you will see something different, or some little subtlety.”

Gere’s 16-year-old son, Adam, and his friend Tyler Gilberts also like being part of the display on Halloween night.

“We’re actually live actors and get to scare people too,” Gilberts, 17, said.

McCaughan and Gere expect at least 200 trick-or-treaters to stop by their homes. Every year, they hear people tell others to “go to the house on Oakes.”

Gere likes to stand outside on Halloween night and watch others react to his display,

“Every year people ask me ‘What are you doing for Halloween?’ and every year I add on,” he said. “I enjoy Halloween over any other holiday there is.”

Amy Daybert: 425-339-3491, adaybert@heraldnet.com.