Local home a spooktacular spot
Kids are having sugar highs all over the city, this morning after all their trick-or-treat booty. The Coletti family is enjoying a high of another kind, but just as linked to last night’s frivolities. Each year for the past dozen or so, the Colettis have decorated their house in Halloween finery. As the years went by, the ambition and the decor compounded. Led by son Spencer, 19, it has become an epic undertaking. He even moved back from Whitehorse when his seasonal work ended so he could take on the family tradition once again.
“I’m still working two full-time jobs,” said Spencer. “I don’t live too far away, it’s pretty quick to come here every day and get to work on it. We’ve been up till 1 in morning working on it, but we used to go at it even harder, so it feels a lot better than 3 or 4 a.m. like it used to be.”
It’s cold at night, but not like some Halloweens past.
“A couple of years it got seriously cold, like unbelievable, and a couple of times it all got snowed on really bad,” said Spencer. “Things got all wet and it took a long time drying it out inside when we had to put it all away.”
His parents, Doug and Carol Anne, have devoted the furnace room and some other nooks and crannies to the Halloween decorations (they do a fair job of decorating for Christmas as well). People will drop by throughout the year to give them new material. Sometimes anonymous donations end up on their doorstep. They also add some key purchases each new Halloween. Some of them involve technology but most of their decorations are good ol’ fashioned tactile items.
“Dad carved the Shrek one and I did all the rest,” said 11-year-old Corbyn, Spencer’s brother who is gleefully walking in his big bro’s Halloween footsteps. “I thought it would be fun to carve scary faces into each one. Makes sense,” naming off each horror movie character depicted in the orange orbs.
“It’s cool seeing all the reactions of people, seeing how many people stop and stare, and my friends like to come by to look at it,” Corbyn said.
He goes out trick-or-treating himself, but Spencer stays behind to monitor the crowds who come by their home in the North Nechako neighbourhood. He and the family worked up to Halloween night for about three weeks, and Spencer could hardly stop to talk on Halloween afternoon. “I’ve got lots more to do, right to the bitter end,” he said.
The decorations do not get packed up immediately after the big event. Anyone wanting to see the Coletti spooktacular can still roll past 3574 Riverview Rd.