DETOUR ... TO TERROR!
Construction theme a hit
With skeletons wearing yellow vests and hard hats and holding shovels, surrounded by orange traffic cones, one Notre-Dame-de-Grâce family has picked perhaps the scariest possible theme for a haunted house: the never-ending Montreal construction nightmare.
The display in front of the Monkland Ave. home is itself a cause of traffic congestion. People routinely slow down or park their cars and get out to admire the display, which is an annual labour of love for Jean-François Cloutier and his wife, Mitra Cowan.
“We thought having a construction scene for Halloween would lighten the mood for people who are stuck in their cars driving home or going to work in the morning,” Cloutier said during a recent tour he gave to the Montreal Gazette. “I think it hit a nerve. Everyone seems to love the construction theme.
“It all started when someone posted a picture on (a Facebook group), so people are driving by and slowing down. People think it’s pretty funny.”
The front lawn of the house at the corner of Montclair Ave. also displays a skeleton holding a drum — which is supposed to be a road roller — running over another skeleton. There’s a confusing detour sign, a dead-end sign and a sign that says construction will end in October 2031. The couple even borrowed a five-foot-high striped orange cone that was abandoned by a road crew. Two towering inflatable monsters appear to be supervising the work.
This is the 14th year the family has put together an elaborate house decoration for Halloween, and each year the theme is different. One year, there was a group of skeletons playing poker at a table. Another year, the couple crafted a centipede out of pumpkins, which was both a crowd-pleaser and a tasty snack for area squirrels.
The front of the house is only part of the family’s Halloween experience. They also have a makeshift haunted house on the side of their home, complete with animatronic zombies, ghosts and skeletons emitting blood-curdling screams, with black light and other visual effects to make the experience even spookier.
Inside the house, there’s a mummy, plus spiderwebs on the ceiling, a witch with a pumpkin for a head and, at the corner of the stairway, a motion-activated talking butler who is a dead ringer for Uncle Fester, of the Addams Family.
No detail is left out: even the portraits on the staircase wall are replaced by images of zombies, ghosts and other scary characters.
Decorating is a family affair that includes Mitra’s parents, Ron and Mehri Cowan, who typically spend about half the year in Montreal before returning home to the U.S. They have been redecorating the inside of the house with homemade Halloween-themed paper.
“We know we’re not allowed to go home before Halloween,” Ron Cowan said. “We have a lot to do here.”
Cloutier said Halloween preparations begin on Nov. 1 of the previous year. That’s when they can get the best deals on decorations — up to 75 per cent below normal retail prices.
Cloutier and Cowan decide on a theme in the summer, and get to work on the haunted house in September. Cloutier said it takes about three full weekends to put everything up, and a day or two after Halloween to take it all down and store it in the basement for the next year.
“I do most of the animatronics, and my wife also helps with the haunted house. Our son, Maxime, is almost 10 years old, so he can help out a lot now, too,” Cloutier said. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it.”
The family hosts two parties in one day on the weekend before Halloween — one for Maxime and his friends, and another for colleagues and their children.
The haunted house is a big hit at the parties, but unfortunately, because of the sheer number of children who trick or treat in the area, it’s off limits on Halloween night.
“We get 300 to 400 kids easily that come through and get candy,” Cloutier said. “It would be too many kids to go through the haunted house.”
However, he said, the family brings out some of the indoor decorations to create a scary scene on the lawn for Halloween night.
“Sometimes you’ll get two- or three-year-old kids who are just staring at the mummy, and it’s a lot of fun to give out candy because people are already having a lot of fun,” Cloutier said.