• Intro

A Nightmare on Brooks Street

Address:

85 Brooks Street
Medford, MA
United States

Contact Email:

Website:

http://www.thehauntedgrounds.com

About:

A free yard haunt with both non-scary hours and scary hours. Dedicated to making Halloween fun and memorable. SWASHBUCKLE UP FOR CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW! Here it comes folks! Yet another year of Halloween Haunting! But this time, Jack Sparrow is waiting! To be honest, this whole thing has gotten a lot larger than any of us had intended (not that we mind!) - even though it's still a yard haunt. We're just a bunch of overgrown kids who really like making children smile at Halloween. It was only one knucklehead on a roof 10 years ago (see the story here) But before we knew it, BAM, and here we are. We have web sites, logos, t-shirts, balloons, glow sticks, crowd control, and an estimated 400 people getting ready to visit. Are we a little overwhelmed? Sure! Do we love it? Absolutely! So, stop by - look around - hopefully you'll like what you see. What do we have in store for this year?! Well, the Pirates seemed like a big hit last Halloween, and although we HATE to do the same, boring thing from year to year, we're going to be doing the Pirate Theme again this year! So come on by! Collect your booty and join the festivities at: 85 Brooks Street, Medford, MA

History:

1996: It all began with Keith manning the folks' house in Weymouth. About 2 hours before kids started trick-or-treating, Keith decided to find a mask that he had floating around. He put it on with a hooded sweatshirt, grabbed his stereo speakers and hopped out onto the roof over the porch. Since the folks were gone, Keith was the only one around to hand out candy. He left a bowl of candy on the porch underneath him and turned up some scary music. Kids started coming by and, although surprised by the scary man on the roof, still took their share of candy. The kids LOVED it, and Keith decided to do more the next year... 1997: The first try at props. Keith picked up some foam insulation from Home Depot and cut three gravestones. He painted them with a sponge and some black and white paint he mixed together. They were pathetic, and ran in the rain. Other than the gravestones, which were put in the garden, this year was pretty much the same. The turnout was greater, though, so Keith recruited help for the next year. 1998: More props this year. We bought a fake looking scarecrow at BJs and put him in the garden. Dick joined in, and went and bought some dry ice. Laura handled the dry ice, and putting it in hot water. The idea was to have a creeping fog in the "graveyard", but it turned out to just be a lot of work on a windy night. Scream was the big movie this year, and we bought a few costumes and started roaming the grounds a bit. This went over VERY big and kids enjoyed the interaction. We also added some "blinking eye bags", which were nothing other than paper bags with holes cut out and blinking lights inside. 1999: The Year Without a Halloween. Keith was sick this year and couldn't set up the house in Weymouth. Kids were later reported to have said "Where's the weird guy on the roof?" Sadly there would never be another Halloween at the home in Weymouth. With roof damage, we have to find another home for Halloween. 2000: Our first year at Medford! Kelly was nice enough to offer up her house as a scare-zone, so we packed up our low-budget show and took it on the road. One thing of note is that this was pretty much the first year of our annual pumpkin-carving. We all got together and had a lot of fun trying to carve some of the most ridiculous junk you've ever seen. We used pretty much the same stuff the first year in Medford as we had in Weymouth. It looked relatively anemic, but we didn't want to blow a bunch of time and effort without knowing how much people in Medford liked Halloween. Turns out they did... 2001: This was an interesting year. Just after 9/11, there was a lot of discussion of how to handle Halloween. We decided not to change anything. If anything, we got a little scarier. We added QUITE a bit during the year, including: one of our favorite effects - fire. tealight candles in the walkway cobwebbing fortune telling (Kali) Polaroids of trick-or-treaters, which we gave out to parents Michael Myers made his first appearance, and was a very big hit, though he wasn't all THAT scary (see photo). We also recruited some other folks and had a little bigger team. This was probably the first year that things started getting noteworthy. The pumpkin carving continued again this year, to the delight of all. We also used them as decorations for the first time this year. I suppose this was when the "Halloween Nazi" was first born. Keith, striving as always for the better good, was dubbed the "Nazi" because of his aggressive pursuit of a Happy Halloween. Click here for a transcript of an email sent by Keith trying to organize a little get together for Halloween planning. 2005: This was an interesting year, because for one reason or another we got it into our heads to do a Pirates of the Caribbean theme, straight from the Disney Ride. We'd taken some ideas from the ride in the past, and they've worked out well. So, since the movie was so popular, we asked Steve to step up and be our Captain Barbossa. He was a huge hit, and a star was born. Captain Barbossa A treasure hunt, with map Treasure Island (left) Treasure Chest (courtesy of Dick) New fog machines! New motion detectors A new witch and a new warlock The hanging skeleton