HALLOWEEN 2023

Von Lockleigh Manor: Our Tour Begins

Join Us… Forever

Flashing lights at a seemingly abandoned house draw your attention. In search of candy you approach, though the closer you get, the more unsure you become.

“Ah yes,” a tall figure booms. “The Master will love you. Right this way…”

The dark alley ends and you’re confronted by a ghastly apparition beneath a flash of lightning. It disappears as quickly as it arrived, and you know it was him, the Master of the House.

An eerily-lit cemetery comes into view, and you swear you can see tiny, faint spirits swirling though the trees. Ancient headstones reflect the green- and blue-tinged light, as a melancholy figure across the graveyard sways slowly in the light breeze… bones creaking.

There are dead here, but they seem to be… more… than that.

A slow, deliberate motion catches your eye. And old man emerges from between the headstones, lantern swinging in his pale… too pale… hand. “Welcome,” he croaks. “Welcome, to Von Lockleigh Manor.” He motions to the decrepit mausoleum to your left, draped in ivy, barred by iron skulls. A single name is etched deep into the worn stone, shot through with jade, onyx, and malice.

LOCKLEIGH

The old man rambles a bit; long-lost families, deceit, tragedy, murder and ghosts featuring prominently in his tale. When you hear him utter the name Charlotte, your bones go cold. The candy in your outstretched hand threatens to fall, hairs stand on the back of your neck. Suddenly, the door to this ancient mausoleum opens, closes, and opens again. A faint light shines from within. Lightning flashes above, and you swear you saw something atop the stone. Something dark. With red eyes.

You turn to run, the old man saying something about escaping down the hall and through the crypts. Faces in portraits gaze then turn to sneer at you as you pass, the Von Lockleighs of days gone, you presume. Underground now, you round a corner and the brittle remains of someone come crashing toward you, jerking tight a length of rope around his neck. You recognize this person, one of the apparitions in the cemetery, wearing a matching ‘necktie’.

Huge spiderwebs, piles of bones, and screaming spirits finally give way to a pitch-black alcove. Singing… you hear singing now, painful, almost moaning… Unnatural light swells and she’s before you: Charlotte. You see in her tear-streaked eyes that she was betrayed and murdered, long ago. And that she has killed many times herself since.

Somehow you’re again outside, under the stars, alive. Hopefully your candy is still in your hand. And hopefully nothing follows you home.

A History Discovered

The concept of Von Lockleigh Manor began late June, 2023. My wife and I were on our way home from a trip and somehow got on the idea of turning our small tool shed in the backyard into a mausoleum. You know, as you do.

Our good buddy — the Von Lockleigh groundskeeper, of course — came over for the Fourth of July and we got to chatting. And taking notes. And sketching. It was all over after that.

We made a bunch of headstones, I clad the tool shed with a handmade façade to turn it into the mausoleum (and rigged a small remote motor to open & close the door), bought a bunch more cheap props, and got to building. Two 10x10’ easy-ups along the side yard set the stage for the crypt, an enclosed walk-thru that serves as the exit after getting candy. It was dark, spooky & twisty and had it’s own sound effects track. I started learning some basic electrical and made some led spotlights.

Nearly everything I was building started to inspire the Von Lockleigh story. Some of it was relayed in the groundskeeper’s tale, most of it is just in our heads — for now.

The story progressed the following year, as did the build. Please take a look through the Halloween 2024 page to see what changed from year to year. I’ll also be making several blog posts covering various portions of the current and past haunt in more detail, as well as the 2024 trunk-or-treat where our “Skeleton Crew” won Best Overall. Those blog posts will aggregate below.

The Haunt Props page [COMING SOON] covers the construction, prop-building, painting, etcetera that goes into our annual haunt. It’s super behind-the-scenes and pretty silly at times.

I also plan to post a video walk-through of the haunt on my youtube channel. I think I’ll include a daytime photo montage along with it, and it will feature an awesome original track written by my cousin, just for our Halloween party!

We hope you enjoyed the tour, foolish mortal. Until next Hallow’s Eve!

The Von Lockleighs

The Humble Roots: 2022

We were at a Spirit Halloween store, probably mid-October, 2022. I asked our middle-school daughter, “do you even want to go trick-or-treating again this year? If not, we could just get some cool decorations and have a party in the garage, pass out candy in the driveway.”

And so it began. A couple ghosts, the Beetlejuice headstone, creepy cloth, a bag of spiderwebs, and a handful of plastic skulls were purchased. My daughter and I, having just watched The Blair Witch Project, cobbled together a creepy creature in the front yard that we affectionately named Booregard. Christmas strobes set on red, paint-bloodied canvas tarps, and a couple pallet wood crosses helped set the scene. A (crappy) Halloween playlist on the Ryobi stereo and a black & white horror movie montage from youtube on the tv and we were all set.

I was standing outside that Halloween night, looking at the white-clad girl ghost. I held a small flashlight up to her from underneath, illuminating her head. Freakin sick. I think that may have been where the planning for 2023 technically started.

Booregard would, of course, eventually become Beauregard Von Lockleigh, the focal point of our now-annual haunt. My daughter and I rebuild him every year, sort of raising him from his slumber, back into the world of mortals to torment the living.

All of these props are still a part of our haunt, and we of course add to it every year. It’s actually pretty cool to look back on these photos now and be reminded of where we started, and which happy haunts have been with us since the beginning!