Gary and Molly Pankow’s Haunted Hollow is back this Halloween in Mill Creek, with its looming towers illuminated with red lights and a new stockade through which visitors can slip their head and hands.
Trick-or-treaters can peer into windows and find an apothecary with glass jars and dry-ice smoke billowing out. A skeleton dangles from the doorway of a mausoleum flooded with green light. An orange boardwalk wraps around a cluster of tombstones.
The Pankows and Richmond Beach couple Thom and Ingrid Klein are both featuring elaborate Halloween yards and collecting nonperishable food for food banks.
The Pankows’ Haunted Hollow is located at 606 164th Place SE in Mill Creek.
The Kleins’ Haunted Yard is at 19818 19th Ave. NW in Richmond Beach.
They will display their yard from Oct. 28 through Halloween. Food items will go to Hopelink, a Shoreline food bank.
A graphic artist for IBM, Pankow has been transforming his yard for six years. Nooses and blood are not his style, so Pankow aims for a silly and fun yard with skeletons perched on bicycles, lounging in hammocks and helping each other climb onto the roof.
“It’s more of a Tim Burton than a Rob Zombie,” Pankow said of his style.
Paying tribute to “An American Werewolf in London,” Pankow set up a “Slaughtered Lamb Pub” next to the cider hut, where he will serve hot cider.
Pankow said he has always been drawn to fall and Halloween. He started out taping a paper skeleton to his parents’ front door as a child and advanced in high school to rigging wires to string flying ghosts.
In recent years he has been consulting the Web site HalloweenForum.com for design ideas, where to score deals for materials and tutorials from other “haunters.” Some of the haunters are from Puyallup, Oak Harbor and Snohomish.
“We’re yard haunters,” Pankow said.
Pankow said he spends approximately $1,000 per year on decorations and materials like Styrofoam, screws and wood.
A fan of both horror films and Gothic architecture, Pankow said his ideas come from movie scenes and are inspired by design. The towers on his roof, for example, come from the Mansford design and have scalloped shingles that he carved himself. Movies like “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Shaun of the Dead” and “Young Frankenstein” complement Pankow’s sense of humor and yard.
He said there has always been a lot of support from the community each Halloween and several neighbors step forward and help with decorations.
“The neighbors think it’s great,” he said. “They’re more than anything excited and want to see what we’re working on. We’re very lucky for the support.”
Ingrid Klein said she and her husband enjoy watching children see their yard and marvel at the decorations. Thom Klein used to work as a landscaper at a cemetery, which is where most of his ideas come from, along with Web sites and movies.
Klein said their decorations appeal to teenagers who put feeling-too-old-for-Halloween sentiment aside and come out to enjoy their decorations, such as a grave digger with a wheelbarrow filled with body parts.
Klein said each Halloween they have a lot of trick-or-treaters; approximately 16 bags of candy’s worth.
She said if each of those children donated a can of food, it would significantly help the food bank.
“It’s something to give back,” she said.
The Kleins have featured a haunted yard for about eight years.
“The main thing is we collect the food and that the kids enjoy it,” she said.
This year’s exhibit will include transforming their boat into a pirate ship and extending their graveyard to the street to include more tombstones.
Finishing touches include a red spider with six-foot legs, a mad scientist holding a head and yellow police tape wrapped around their yard.
Klein said the neighbors are very supportive and tell them they love the decorations.
“We see cars pass, hear their brakes and then watch them come back,” she said.
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