Getting into the spirit

Homeowners make trick-or-treating a frightful experience

BY PETE WICKLUND
Journal Times

Sunday, October 28, 2007 9:15 PM CDT

RACINE — For many kids, trick-or-treating is all about the candy. But on Sunday, some area homeowners wanted to make sure their young visitors remember well the thrill and chill aspect of Halloween.

Wes and Wendy Nault get a charge out of making kids jump as they go up the front walkway of their Debra Lane home on the city’s south side. Their yard Sunday was festooned with gravestones, caskets, smoking barrels and more. Some of those displays were wired for sound and movement; many a young visitor jumped when encountering a barking, jumping caged dog or an unexpected buzzer.

The Naults’ display, complete with scary music and smoke effects, was too much for 4-year-old Nemeiso Rodriguez. Wes had to run some candy out to the Spiderman-costmed Nemeiso. But for 13-year-old Janice Welch, the Naults’ home is always full of surprises and is "the best house on the block."

For Wes, whose electrician skills help him pull off the surprises, getting into the spirit is a family tradition. His dad always went all out for Halloween when Wes was growing up in New Jersey, he said. And it was only natural that he carry that tradition on when he moved to Racine after marrying Wendy.

For 10 years, the Naults have been putting up the display, adding a little bit more very year. For the past several years, Wendy’s best friend, Melissa Marry, has helped with the construction of some of the displays. And for the last three or four she has dressed in costume to hand out candy. This year she was an intimidating "skeleton lord."

"I love every minute of it," Marry said.

The simplest of materials are used to make the realistic-looking props. Wes used an old fountain pump to draw red liquid from a tub that flows out of the mouth of a plastic skull. The surprise buzzer was a discarded fire alarm Wes found at work. Painted styrofoam wall filler was used to make volcano lava and "radioactive" goo that appeared to ooze from a 55-gallon drum, complete with bio-hazard warning labels.

The Naults set the display up in just a day and it was to come down just after the end of the city’s trick-or-treating hours Sunday to avoid vandalism. In fact, the only regret Wes said he had was the limited time for trick-or-treating, which ended before sunset Sunday.

Halloween hobbyist

On the city’s north side, near Horlick High School, Halloween prop veteran Ron Sokolwski was welcoming visitors to his house with a chainsaw-wielding masked man.

In reality, the masked man was Sokolowski’s grandson, Shaun LaFever, a senior at Horlick, and the chainsaw was a toy Halloween prop.

Ascending the stairs of Sokolowski’s Neptune Avenue home, trick-or-treaters encountered spilled "blood" on the concrete that led them past a butcher table full of "bloodied" rubber limbs and appendages.

Sokolowski has been involved in the haunting game for some time. Before moving to the Neptune Avenue home to care for his elderly mother, Sokolowski decked out his former home on Jean Avenue for 18 years. At his current residence, he’s been scaring the neighbors for nine Halloweens.

He also helped coordinate the haunted house at the YMCA for 16 years, has assisted the Racine Jaycees with past haunted houses and had also set up props in the past for Halloween parties at Gilmore Middle School on Northwestern Avenue.

At his home display, Sokolowski got into character, donning the black robes and skull mask of a Grim Reaper-like character. This year Sokolwski and LaFever also got some help from LaFever’s girlfriend, Amber Friso, a junior at Union Grove High School.

"At quarter to seven I had a car drop off five or six kids and they probably weren’t even from around here. But it doesn’t matter, I had plenty of candy," said Sokolowski, who estimated he entertained at least 120 kids Sunday.

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