Halloween in MV

While everyone and there mom heads to the Castro for Halloween, I've always chosen to return to Mountain View to put together and help run my family's haunted house. It's hard to believe we've been doing it for 9 years now. It's gotten a little better each year too. This year we greatly enhanced the Haunted Mansion-inspired "pepper's ghost effect"...basically using mirrors and glass to create the optical illusion of a ghostly woman (we call her La Llarona) appearing and disappearing in a room.

The haunted house has really become a great tradition and something that not only my family but also a lot of the neighborhood families look forward to now. Each year it seems like more people come...this year we even had minivans of people pull up to our house to take a look, and at one point the line to get in went all the way down the driveway to the street.

And it's not like it's the only gig in town. Over on the other side of Old Mountain View are two far more elaborately decorated haunted houses. But what makes ours different is that it's more human...more friendly. We have things for little kids. We're not gory. We always ask people if they want to get scared or just look. Everyone that goes through it either exits screaming and laughing or just smiling. It feels really, really good to give my neighbors something special to enjoy every Halloween.

This year, was also impressive in terms of who showed up from my family and friends. 5 of my mom's six siblings were there. A whole bunch of cousins. Both of my dad's brothers, all three of my grandparents, and a lot of friends too: Lauren Berger, Jen, Eric, Dan, Julie, and Wycee! And there were enough of my mom's green enchiladas to go around for everyone!

So it was a great night, a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to next Halloween already :-)

Here are the photos:

Me and Jen and the remote-control rat.


My Auntie Elise and the cutest little monkey-baby ever, my cousin Peyton.

My Nina Lydia and my mom with the new baby cousin of the family, Carolyna

My Uncle Ric had a great sumo-wrestler costume, too bad this photo is blurry!

My cousins Lisa and Marisa


My brother Chris was nothing more than a Davis SID

Dan! Julie! Me! Jen! Lauren! Eric! Wycee! and baby Peyton!

The Berkeley crew + Jen


A long line of neighbors waits to get into the haunted house.


My cousin Lisa's kid Angelica, hiding behind the fence having a blast being the best talking tree ever (but not the Stanfurd tree because he's a very bad tree...her Cal alumni parents have trained her well).

And we'll close with this shot of Julie taking a turn at being the scary "chain saw" (leaf-blower) person that provides our haunted house with its grand finale.