The Dunbar Haunted House has grown out of a love of Halloween and a desire to connect with our community.
Six years ago, five kids came trick-or-treating to our house on Halloween night. Determined to re-kindle the Halloween spirit we remember as kids, we decorated our unpaved, gravel driveway with a graveyard scene the following year using scrap construction materials. It took half a day to set-up and lasted about four hours. Gideon was the sole spook. We had about a hundred visitors.
The following year we spent several weeks decorating the entire front of the house and the newly paved driveway. We used more scrap materials, but added a mish-mash of locally acquired Halloween props, masks and costumes. We even had a few larger props we picked-up from the U.S. during the off season. Much to our surprise, hundreds of people turned up over the course of several weeks and on Halloween night we probably had over five-hundred people in our front yard. We raised just under $5000 dollars for the B.C. Fire Fighters’ Burn Fund.
The large and unexpected response to our second haunt emboldened us to expand. During our third year, we decorated our entire property in an elaborate, multi-set “ghost-walk,” which took visitors through our driveway, down the side of the house, around the backyard, back up the other side of the house, and across the front yard. We spent at least six weeks setting up the display and about three weeks dismantling it. We had numerous volunteers helping us with set-up and spooking, including friends, students from school and several enthusiastic neighbours. The haunt was open for two weeks and raised around $20,000 for the B.C. Fire Fighters’ Burn Fund, the B.C./Yukon Make-A-Wish-Foundation, and the B.C. Childhood Cancer Parents’ Association.
Last year, our fourth, we kept the same layout as the previous year but added a lot more detail to the individual sets. We designed the haunt around the theme of “The Terror of History,” so as to make the ghost-walk a journey through time. Visitors passed from ancient Egypt through Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, the plague, the Age of Exploration, the Revolutionary Wars, a 19th-century insane asylum, a 20th-century mutant pumpkin patch, and a hillbilly slaughter shed. The haunt took three months to set up and many more months for planning and prop development. Fortunately, a lot of new faces helped us with the set up and spooking. Line-ups from 7:00 pm to closing became a regular feature, and we raised just over $30,000 for the B.C. Professional Fire Fighters’ Burn Fund, the Vancouver Police Union Charity Foundation, and the B.C. Childhood Cancer Parents’ Association.
This year we explore new and traditional facets of Halloween in a series of displays that are bigger and more terrifying than ever. Visit us if you dare...