Creepy creations give us a scare – and help lifesavers
IT’S not every day you see a house covered in spiderwebs with skeletons on the lawn, but at Halloween, communities across Wales throw themselves into the festivities.
This year, the people of Murton are in for a spook-tacular Halloween thanks to a scary display.
Glyn Allen and his partner Theresa Hemming have transformed their front garden into a visual delight featuring giant spiders, skeletons, plenty of fake blood and some amazing special effects.
Glyn says this is the fourth year they have done this display, and it all started as a surprise for his grandchildren: “The grandkids just wanted to do some pumpkins and get dressed up and so on, so I thought I’d do a little surprise for them by just putting a little ghost up and some other bits in the garden, and then from that it progressed on.
“My partner, Theresa, she’s very creative. She’s a really good hand and just started building it and building it and building it. And we mainly continued on because of the reactions we get.
“Every year when this time comes, we’re getting asked by the neighbours, ‘Oh what are you doing this year? When’s the display going up?’ and we love it.
“Now the display is up, we have cars slowing down all the time, people running to put money in the box in the rain, we even had one person knock on our door to ask if he could take pictures. When we get reactions like that, it makes it all worthwhile.”
This year’s display has been a particularly tough one to pull together, with planning starting way back in July.
Glyn and Theresa make all the props themselves, with the exception of the skeletons.
“We’ve been ordering stuff since the summer, the skeletons alone are £30 each, we’ve spent about £200 in total.
“Me and Theresa worked on this year’s display for like 10 days, it was driving us mental.
“We couldn’t get it right. We couldn’t get the fans right. and get the lighting right and it just went on and on and on.
“We have fake flames in the window, and we have to tell the fire brigade each night when we turn them on and off so they don’t get calls from passers by thinking the house is on fire.”
The spooky display also raises money for the Mumbles RNLI, which Glyn was a part of for 22 years.
Known locally as Pirate Glyn because of his service with the RNLI, he says he couldn’t think of a better charity to honour.
“It’s a very personal choice for me as I’ve worked with the lifeboat.
“I still have a lot of friends in the crew and they deserve all the donations they get.
“I’m going to let the lifeboat crew open the donations box so I can see the looks on their faces.”
Glyn also says he has a surprise in store for any trick-or-treaters, but we’ve been sworn to secrecy, so if you want to know, you’ll have to find out for yourselves!
The display located on Mansfield Road, Murton, will be up all Halloween weekend.