HALLOWEEN
HOUSE
HALLOWEEN
HOUSE
Photos of years past.
Halloween House 1999 Web pages with descriptions
Halloween House 2000 Web pages with descriptions
Halloween House 2001 Web pages with descriptions
Halloween House 2002 photo links only
Halloween House 2003 photo links only
Halloween House 2004 Web pages with descriptions
Halloween House 2005 Several pages of photos
Halloween House 2006 A few pages of this years nonsense
2006 recap.
Total donations value this year was 3,512.67
Another great year.
A huge "Thank You" to all our friends and neighbors for making this such a great event every year.
LOCATED AT 520 NORTH ST IN TUMWATER ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE MASONIC TEMPLE AND CEMETERY. JUST UP THE STREET FROM OLYMPIA HIGH SCHOOL.
A brief history
Halloween House started out in 1999 as a simple obsession that we turned into a fundraiser for the Thurston County Food Bank. Our new neighbors, worried at first by what appeared to be a permanent fence made of pure evil, soon embraced our cause and have been more than supportive of the disruption for the month of October. This ran from 1999-2002
In 2002 we sold everything the day after Halloween. The whole venture had gotten out of hand. 5,000 people in 6 days wiped us out physically and mentally. We had to have 22 volunteers, a civic group to help with the donations, 4 police a night for traffic control and were spending $200.00 a day to feed everyone.We were spending all our time managing people rather than enjoying the looks on visitors faces or getting to interact with the crowd. We just weren't having fun anymore so away it all went.
With that in mind, in 2003 I decorated entirely by myself with only what I could build and install in eight hours on Halloween. It was a blast. I had only 80 visitors and got to visit with them all. I scared a lot of folks after they were done telling me that it wasn't spooky anymore. That was a hoot.
In the fall of 2004 while talking with the Food Bank I discovered that they missed the annual load of food that we dropped off and that no one had picked up where I'd left off.
After Halloween 2003 I'd given everything away. So, I was ready to start building again. The difference being that I built one new prop each day and put it out in the morning and took it down at night. The goal wa31 props in 31 days. I made it to day 29 and fell apart. I was sleeping only a few hours a night and I just couldn't make those last couple of days. The yard was open in the evenings at that point and I had to sleep. On Friday, October 29th I started putting them all out again or at least close to all of them. Some of them had had dual purposes so I had to decide which to sacrifice. Folks were be able to look on-line at every prop built so if they're weren't able to come by on Halloween to see which one they wanted ,and they won the drawing we were having, they could pick from the files found on-line. The raffle was so much fun that instead of giving away one prop I gave away a bunch of them.
2005 we put a fence back up so we could leave things out. Gave away a whole bunch of stuff again that year.
2006 we gave away 10 major props. The Shredder, Frank-N-Family, Skull fountain, Tombstone and Skeleton, Mr. Pig, PumpkinRot, Hope in her coffin, The BBQ, Jack Skellington and The Bottomless Pit. We were having so much fun having the director of the food bank draw names that we had him just keep going. Now I get to build a bunch of new stuff for 2007.
Thanks again to everyone for their support.