All tricked out

ERIN GALLETTA / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Patrick Brennan, 3, and his sister Kayla Brennan, 7, check out the progress on the "dungeon" as their uncle Michael Brennan and father Jeff Brennan work on this year's Halloween display at 14431 General Drive in Plainfield.

ERIN GALLETTA / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Jeff and Michael Brennan make many of their own props in their annual Halloween yard display. They modified the eyes in this skull to glow.

"Oh yeah, I got looks," Mike said of his fellow motorists. "But I get even more looks when I've got it riding around in my kid's car seat."

At least "Bucky," his bony friend, was buckled in.

"He's gotta be buckled in. It's the law," Mike pointed out.

The Brennan brothers love Halloween. No really, they love it. Both of them have the theme music from "Halloween" as their ring tones. Collectively, they are known as the Haunt Brothers.

For the past nine years, they've operated Haunted Plainfield ( http://www.hauntedplainfield.com/ ), a haunted house of sorts in Jeff's front yard, driveway and garage. They've always held it in Jeff's Oakdale Circle home, but this year, the haunt has moved (along with Jeff and his family) to a new house on General Drive.

Each season, the brothers spend a sizable chunk of change on their obsession. When asked how many bins they have to store their props in, they just laughed.

They've got a storage shed.

The day after Halloween, they hit the sales and start collecting things for the following year.

The brothers started the yearly haunted house as children in their parents' Naperville home.

"We used to decorate the crawl space and have kids over," Jeff said.

They do it, he said, "completely for the entertainment of the kids."

"We like to send children screaming into the night," Mike added, grinning. "When they're in the haunted house getting the crap scared out of them and they're saying each other's names. So I'm listening and learning their names, and afterwards I ended up chasing them down the street screaming their names."

Not only did he do that, but he remembered those kids when they returned the following year.

"We have sent people running and hollering," he said. "When little kids come around, we tone it down. When teenagers come through, it's ramped up."

"We try to leave a way out so people can get out and not destroy things in the process," Jeff said.

On a recent warm October afternoon, the brothers were getting things set up for Saturday night's official opening. They both live in Plainfield, but Jeff's home has been the base of operations.

They make a lot of the props used in the haunt, like the "wrought iron" gate and "stone" columns surrounding the graveyard in the front yard. Visitors to the house come in through the narrow opening and poke around the yard, with its many tombstones and other props (including a large purple spider they call Fred.)

They have four fog machines, including one on ice that creates a chilling fog that hovers at knee level — very creepy.

An animatronic skeleton dressed in a ratty suit stands on the front porch reciting Edgar Allen Poe. With the discreet flip of a switch, he'll gyrate to "Super Freak."

Where, pray tell, does one find such a creature?

"Our grandma gave it to us," Jeff said, grinning.

"Our parents and grandparents help us with our psychotic mayhem," Mike added.

After passing the poetry-reciting skeleton, guests will move into the dungeon (the garage.) Mike made the walls of the dungeon from pink foam board spray-painted gray and black with grooves routed out in the wall.

The dungeon is home to Sparky, a prisoner in an electric chair (the first prop the brothers ever made.) Sparky's not hooked up to a sensor or timer — he jerks and spasms via a remote controlled by one of the brothers whenever they feel things are getting too quiet.

A skull in a garbage can is controlled by a remote. Guests are drawn to a box labeled "do not touch," with a button. Of course, you're going to push the button. What happens next is the logical conclusion, but it still gives you a start.

This is the first year in a while that the Haunt Brothers won't be doing a maze in the driveway, because of the move to the new house. They say that although this year will be toned down somewhat, they promise next year they'll be back in full fury. As a gesture to their fans, a six-foot troll will return once again.

"For people who come on Halloween, the troll will be making his comeback," Mike said. "He's been gone from the haunt for the last two years."

But don't think for a moment that because they've scaled back from previous years that they've gone soft. That is far from the case, the brothers say. There's plenty of pneumatic props and other ghoulish delights guaranteed to give you a thrill. Live actors will be out on Halloween night from 4:30 to 9 p.m.

They've got a coffin donated by Friedrich-Jones & Overman-Jones Funeral Home and body bags donated from the DuPage County Coroner. They're debating on whether or not to have a live person inside the bag.

"This gets bigger every year," Jeff said. "And now that I've got my own single-family home, it's just going to be huge. Come January, we're going to be planning next year."

"January? Try Nov. 1," Mike said.

The Brennan brothers aren't the only ghouls who live for October. Maybe because the weather's nice and the chance of slipping off an icy roof is a lot lower in October than it is in December, but it seems that Halloween is fast becoming the new Christmas, in terms of decorating the home's exterior.

Jason Senecker operated "Apparitions on Addleman Street," as he has done for the past four years at his parents' home at 1112 Addleman St. in Joliet. This year, from 4 to 8 p.m. on Oct. 30 and 31, he'll employ live actors and take donations for the American Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina relief.

His props include a working electric chair, tombstones, a bubbling barrel of acid and a guy popping out of it, a UFO crashed into the side of the house, scarecrows, a jail cell and a coffin.

"I built an organ, and on Oct. 30 and 31, I know a guy who plays piano and he'll be dressed as the Phantom of Opera playing live," Senecker said.

"Last year we had quite a few people (come by)," he said. "We do our best not to scare the younger ones. We kind of wave and say hi. Older kids and adults are fair game. On the side, we're going to have an area for smaller kids."

He says a couple schoolbuses come through the yard every day, and he always gets a kick out of hearing the honks and screams.

"The front yard is 100 percent covered," he said. "We have the windows boarded up, guys hanging out of the roof, spiders on the roof. The back yard is done up pretty well too. Some of the artwork we did is beautiful. We took our time and put some time and thought into the things we built. We wanted to make it as realistic as we possibly could."

He gets a lot of help from his family and friends, he said.

"My dad thinks we're nuts, but my mom really loves it," he said. "For whatever reason, our family really loves Halloween. We all get together and decorate and have a good time."

Theisa Cruz, who lives at 1408 Belleview Ave. in Rockdale, feels sorry for her neighbors this time of year. She goes all-out with her yard for Halloween.

"Last year, my husband didn't get involved," she said. "This year, he is."

Her decorations include a mummy, a Frankenstein's monster, a big spider, orange icicle lights, strobe lights, coffins and a seven-foot-tall Grim Reaper in the front yard.

"We re-arranged things this year, and we have stuff in the backyard," she said. "People can go through the graveyard in the back. We have more dummies, more scary monsters."

The lights will be on from dusk to midnight for people to stop by, but be prepared — her display is of the scary variety.

"It's my favorite holiday," she said. "I get into Christmas because of the kids, but it's always been about Halloween."

Debora Hodo's daughters are the ones who go overboard at Halloween. Noel, 17; Johna, 15; and Marissa Salazar, 14 have decked out the family's 612 Wilcox Ave. home.

"We have a witch coming out of a grave, a pumpkin king holding a decapitated vampire bride's head and a sickle, we have grave stones with the names of actual murderers, Freddy Krueger's hand coming out of a grave, a witch's brew, Mickey Mouse dressed in a witch's hat holding an American flag because my husband's a veteran, and a grave of Osama bin Laden," she said. "And we have some plastic rats and witches and some scarecrows."

The girls do it all, from the lighting to the layout.

"They worked in spook houses for 4-H for a few years. They've been doing it here for about 10 years," she said. "It's flowed inside the house too. My dog can't go in certain areas of the house because he's scared. We do the same for Christmas — go overboard. We've been told we can land a plane in front of our house."

Tammy Krein and her husband Dan decorate their home in Plainfield's Wedgewood subdivision with fog machines, lights, tombstones and monsters like Pinhead, Dracula, Jason Voorhees (from the "Friday the 13th" series) and Freddy Krueger.

"We did it last year ... and people came up and took pictures," she said. That gave them the taste for blood. "We love Halloween. We love to put scary stuff out, and we decided to do a little more this year. Every year we'll add on to it."

Mike and Rhonda Callans start decorating their Kelly Avenue home in Joliet on Oct. 1 and will continue to add things right up until Halloween.

"Each year he tries to out-do the previous year's display, and he makes everything himself," Rhonda Callan said. "We have people stopping in front of our house and taking pictures. At night it is even spookier, with strange lighting and strobes. On Halloween we all dress up to greet the trick or treaters, play scary music and have lots of candles and a fog machine going."

Mark Kuhajda runs "Count Kuhajda's Haunted Haus" at 2223 Nicholson St. in Joliet. For the past several years, he's created a truly gruesome display in his yard.

"I've got the Dracula and Frankenstein up in the front, and Hell's Kitchen on the side," he said. "I've got Gory Ramsey grilling body parts, and Annie Rexia is the skeleton 'moonbathing' in a bikini."

These new props are his favorite this year.

"All the kids have their favorites," he said. "They like Frankenstein and the guy that throws up — the undertaker puking in a barrel of embalming fluid."

They only have the sound effects and fog going on weekends so as not to irritate the neighbors, he said.

John and Ruth Bene, at 1400 Black Road in Joliet, have a display stretching about 80 feet in their yard.

"I have all kinds of pumpkin displays, ghost displays, graves — it goes longer than house," he said. "I've been decorating for about 20 years. I do it for each season, but for Halloween I've got more out than I do for any of them."

He knows people are noticing the house when he hears the honks of horns from impatient drives at the stoplight at Midland Avenue, he said. He likes it when people take the time to ring the doorbell and compliment him on his decorations.

Lori DeMoss and her daughter Erica helped up her father's annual yard display at 19 Fairlane Drive in Joliet. Mike Tomlinson's display includes all hand-made characters, like Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein, a cowboy skeleton, witches and gargoyles.

Nicole and Eric Geistler are getting used to people stopping to gawk at their home at 430 S. River Court in Plainfield, near Plainfield Central high school.

"We have a graveyard, lights, a couple of light-up figures in the front, flying bats with eyes, a monster, a fog machine," she said. "It's pretty fun. We're the only ones on the court who decorate. We've been doing it the last few years; this year we added more and more. Next year we'll probably be bigger."

She recommended guests check out the names of the folks on the tombstones — fans of the "Halloween" movies will get a tickle.

"There's lots to look at," she said. "We have friends who take that way home to see if we've added more stuff."

Three Lockport favorites have returned again. Lisa and Bob Ash, who set up "A Nightmare in Lockport" at their McCameron Avenue home, have added a couple new items to their annual display; including a pop-up Jason Voorhees, a pop-up clown, a spider that drops from the tree and a bleeding tombstone.

Down the street from the Ashes on MacIntyre Avenue, Sue and Rick Rager have set up Thanatophobialand. You'll know their home from the hearse parked out front.

And it just wouldn't be Halloween without Bill Ward, one of the masters of yard decoration. He started doing a window display in 1983. That's escalated into a display that entertains about 6,000 visitors a year.

His display officially opens tonight and runs from 6 to 10 p.m. through Halloween.

Back in Joliet, Tim Mahoney operates "Madness on Midland." He learned a thing or two about decorating from Bill Ward, and even got some of his old monsters. Mahoney's is an annual yard display with characters like Michael Myers, Jason and the masked guy from "Scream."

"And there's all kinds of miscellaneous monsters and stuff," he said. "I'm going to be adding more to it — every day I'm going to be adding something."

He, too. will have a donation box out front, with all proceeds to going toward Katrina relief. He has a friend who works for the Katrina relief organization. "It's fun," he said. "I like it when the kids come trick or treating. I like to watch the parents walk the little kids up to house. It's such a joy for parents too."