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Halloween displays light up the night in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows

Displays feature a pirate ship, graveyard, and giant spider
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Pirate ship display at 11759 Graves Street in Maple Ridge. (Special to The News)

Terri Peacock has been decorating her house for Halloween for just shy of a quarter of a century.

Her husband, she explained, started the display 24 years ago, when their daughter Miriah was born, with a giant spider web and a flat plastic garbage bag spider.

“It was his thing that he started,” said Peacock through tears, adding that her husband died in 2006 after a battle with cancer.

“It was pretty rough that year and people made homemade cards for us, it was really nice. They said thank you for doing this even though everything we’ve gone through,” she said.

Peacock, her fiance, and three children put up the display this year. However, Peacock is planning on moving and says this will probably be the final year for the display.

In addition to the giant spider, there are ghouls, ghosts, tombstones, skulls that light up, and skeletons on her front yard at 21110 River Road, Maple Ridge.

There is a new cemetery in town. But in this cemetery skeletons wander above ground, not rest below it.

The entrance to Alouette Cemetery is at 12795 227A Street in Maple Ridge. There you will find two six metre high skeletons, a skeleton digging a grave, and another stirring a cauldron.

Visitors to the graveyard have been asking Stacey Lyle if her husband Brad works in the movie industry.

“We’re like, no, just hanging out in the garage building Halloween stuff,” said Stacey.

The entrance to the graveyard looks like it is made of concrete and wrought iron. But, the columns were made by building a wood frame and covering it in foam, before being hand painted and carved. Then Brad put in little doors in the columns to run the electrical wiring for lights and two animatronics – a crouching skeleton that rocks back and forth and another one holding a lantern that also rocks, beckoning visitors into the cemetery.

It is the skeleton that crouches that everyone thinks is the creepiest, said Stacey.

“It took the longest because his upper body moves away from his lower body,” she said.

Stacey and Brad started building for their display in July and they just finished the first week of October.

“It’s just nice to do it,” said Brad about the effort they put into the display each year.

“When I was a kid I was always in awe by seeing stuff like this,” he noted, adding that they hope children who see their display have fun and grow up to do the same for their children.

The display will be turned on from dusk until 10 p.m. every night until Halloween.

The Lyle’s are hoping that visitors will consider donating to Katie’s Place Animal Shelter, a volunteer-run nonprofit animal shelter in in Maple Ridge. To donate go to katiesplaceshelter.com.

Spirit on Stoney Ave. are daring only the brave to enjoy their haunted adventure. Lights and blow up characters, one taller than the roof of their house, have taken over the front lawn. The Grim Reaper hovers over the entrance to a passageway at the end of their driveway. Upon entering the dimly lit path, visitors walk by a werewolf, skeleton, an oversized jack-in-the-box, among other characters meant to scare.

Donations are being collected for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a personal campaign sponsored by Bryce Young. The display is open from 5:30-10 p.m. until Halloween night and is located at 20812 Stoney Ave. in Maple Ridge.

To donate go to makeawishca.donordrive.com.

A pirate ship a little more than eight metres long sits on Kerry McCulloch’s front lawn.

The Maid of Plighwood is inhabited only by skeletons all dressed in pirate attire. There is even a treasure chest filled with gold.

McCulloch built the ship using recycled and repurposed wood.

“I’ve always been huge for Halloween and so I had a lot of the skeletons and I went to the thrift stores to get all the clothing for them. So, everything is either recycled or repurposed,” she said.

McCulloch collected items all year round for the display. She started painting the many signs that decorate the ship during the summer. And she started building the ship – with help from her husband, son, and a neighbour – the day after Thanksgiving.

The treasure chest McCulloch found for free online was in pretty rough shape. The gold is made of spray foam with items she collected on top, all painted gold.

McCulloch’s display is at 11759 Graves Street in Maple Ridge. Lights will turn on at 5 p.m. from now until Halloween.

Other displays worth seeing include:

• 11619 Cobblestone Lane, Pitt Meadows, where you can tune to 88.3 FM for the sounds to go with the display

• 19208 Streamstone Walk, Pitt Meadows

• At the corner of Poplar Drive and Ponderosa Blvd., in the Meadow Highlands Co-operative along Hammond Road in Pitt Meadows, there is an outdoor haunted house. Donations collected go back into next years display


Have a story tip? Email: cflanagan@mapleridgenews.com
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Alouette Cemetery is at 12795 227A Street in Maple Ridge. (Special to The News)


Colleen Flanagan

About the Author: Colleen Flanagan

I got my start with Black Press Media in 2003 as a photojournalist.
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