This is Halloween

I can remember trying to scare the neighborhood trick-or-treaters in my younger years.  A Halloween mask, strobe light and some eerie music piped through the stereo in the living room is all it seemed to take. Looking back my attempt was pretty much a feeble amateur hour effort.  If you want to see how the pros going about putting a fright in their neighbors take a stroll through the eerie side of Halloween in Tracy.

 Spooky masks and strobe lights are so last decade when it comes to terrorizing the neighbors.  Grab yourself an armful of animated monsters, some friends who like to dress up in ghoulish outfits and a yard full of macabre decorations that even the next door neighbor’s cat thinks about twice before visiting.  Add a dash of computer controlled light and music effects and pinch of steel sculpture twisted enough to terrorize visitors and you can join the elite ranks of Tracy haunted houses ready to put the screams into the Halloween night.  For a story previewing some of the Halloween Eve haunts in Tracy I paid a visit to three homes preparing to get their fright on.  

The Fulkerson family and their Kings Canyon Court house of horrors is one of the long time haunts for Halloween in Tracy.   A macabre graveyard scene greets trick-or-treaters who then face a haunted house maze of dark corners inhabited by demonic clowns and monsters of movie fame. Their next door neighbors joined in with an singing pumpkin display with computer controlled light effects and music.

 If dark, narrow passages aren't your thing then maybe a stroll through Phil Walter’s zombie infested bone yard on Lincoln Boulevard is more to your taste.  Giant spiders, a demented scientist and other horrors wait beyond the gate.

 If you want to think big then a the view of Bill Kirk’s steel pumpkin man sculpture on 2oth Street is what your looking for.  His 14-foot tall animated pumpkin man skeleton tearing apart a human skeleton will draw more than a few curious stares come Halloween night.  A hand made hanging cage rounds out the torture theme for his Halloween display.

Yes it is a different world for Halloween today.  My futile attempt to scare the neighbors pales to today’s animated, computer controlled nightmares.  I’ll be content to sit at home alone this Halloween with a scary movie on the television.  I have had my fill of haunted houses for the year.