By Julia Train
On the corner of Leap Street and Ocean Heights Avenue in Egg Harbor Township, you might be taken aback when you see an extravagant, spooky scene with a multitude of creepy characters and props.
In 2016, Lauren Eastlack moved with her family to her new house and decided to put a few blow ups in the yard for Halloween, unbeknownst that it would eventually turn into a locally-famous spooky spectacle.
“Everybody loves it. When the buses go by, [kids] make their parents drive them back so they can see.. people stop and park across the street so they can come walk through and take pictures on the sidewalk, everything like that. People actually look for what’s new every year,” said Eastlack.
Her love of the spooky season stems from her father’s love of Halloween leading her family to decorate their house for the holiday when she was a kid.
Her boyfriend loves it as well, so the couple, along with their two children, decided to get the house into the spirit one year.
After Labor Day, the decorations that take up the entirety of her shed and half of Eastlack’s basement are taken out and set up across her one-acre property.
Eastlack said the basic structure of the scene is put up within four days, but pieces are added and tweaked during the following weeks.
The elaborate scene, displaying an array of characters, includes a full graveyard, a giant witch that flies, a 12-foot skeleton, the Phantom, a guy barbecuing, skeleton dogs hanging around the campfire with Halloween masks, Freddy Krueger, and other horror film characters, sitting around the bar and a skeleton pushing a lawn mower that’s running somebody else over.
At night the house is lit up with purple lights, there’s a fog machine and a strobe light.
That might sound like a lot of decorations for one holiday, but it doesn’t stop there!
Every year, the collection grows. After the holiday passes, Eastlack buys even more Halloween decorations when they’re on sale and adds them to their display.
Eastlack said, “My favorite part of it is the love that everybody else gets out of it. I love seeing people react to it. And when I’m at work or I’m doing something and they’re like, ‘Oh, there’s this really cool house [on Ocean Heights] and everybody has to go check it out.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s my house.’”
