Reporting by Monique Calello, Staunton News Leader
There are aliens performing autopsies, a headless woman descending the staircase, a pet cemetery in the yard and a guillotine that traveled from Florida to Virginia.
But behind the spectacle that is the Staunton Halloween house at 214 Church St. is something considerably less frightening: a family tradition that has grown into a neighborhood affair.
Kelly Morse has been decorating for Halloween for 25 years, beginning in 2001, when she moved into her first house in Florida during October.
“When I moved into my very first house the month of Halloween, and I wasn’t even finished unpacking, I was making headstones out of the Styrofoam from work because Halloween’s my favorite,” Morse said, laughing. “I was, like, making a Halloween yard before I even fully moved into my house.”
She went on to make a coffin, a mausoleum and a cauldron. The collection eventually became so large that when the family moved, Morse said they nearly filled an entire moving pod with Halloween decorations.
Eight years ago, the family brought the tradition to Staunton.
“The first year we moved here, we started, and added a little bit each year, and more people come each year,” Morse said.
Now, transforming the Church Street home for Halloween takes roughly a month and enough decorations to fill an entire 10-by-10-foot storage unit.
“About 100 Tupperwares,” Morse said.
A new scare every year at the Staunton Halloween house
Each room of the house has a theme, and the family tries to add something new every year.
This year, extraterrestrials have landed on Church Street. Outside is a crashed spaceship, while the first room visitors encounter has become an alien autopsy room.
“They’re autopsying us,” Morse said, laughing. “So, it’s a little opposite.”
Elsewhere, visitors will find a haunted library, a room inspired by “Stranger Things” and the “woman of the house,” a headless woman who descends the entranceway staircase to greet people.
The house has 10 animatronics along with fog machines, music and Halloween lighting.
The family also makes most of its own decorations, including headstones and pumpkins. Others have remained part of the family’s Halloween collection for years and moved with them from Florida to Virginia.
Among the decorations Morse is most proud of is a handmade signpost showing cities and their distances from the house.
“We tried to measure the exact distance from Florida to those places,” Morse said. “And then when we moved here, we had to repaint the sign with the actual miles from here to the places.”
It’s a small reminder that the Halloween tradition itself has traveled.
So has another unusual decoration: a homemade guillotine.
“The guillotine,” Morse said when asked about the family’s handmade props. “We made that guillotine back in Florida. That came from Florida. That is a weird thing to pack in a pod.”
But over the years, the guillotine has become less about its scare factor and more about family history.
Every year, Morse takes a photograph of her son, Colin, with it.
“You know how, like, you measure your child’s height on the wall?” Morse said. “Every year, I get a picture with him in the guillotine. So, I have that as kind of like a measurement of his growth.”
The tradition started even earlier with Morse’s mother, Chris.
“I think the first year I did it, I have a picture of mom’s head in the guillotine, ’cause I made her do it,” Morse said.
Once Colin came along, he became the star of the annual photograph.
“He’s an October baby, too, so he was destined to be a Halloween kid,” his mother said.
Growing up with Halloween
Colin has his own favorites among the family’s enormous Halloween collection.
When asked which decorations he liked best, he brought over two skeletons from the yard. One is an old, floppy skeleton he said has been a favorite for most of his life.
“I’ve always liked him because I like my stuffed animals and stuff like that,” Colin said. “Every single skeleton we have isn’t floppy. This is the one that has all the floppies.”
Unlike the family’s skeletons with bendable parts, his favorite cannot be posed.
“Even though he can’t pose and bend, he’s still my favorite,” Colin said. “I’ve liked him my, like, whole entire life.”
He remembers one photograph in particular in which his face was painted like Pennywise while he held the skeleton.
“So these are, like, my two favorites,” Colin said.
For Kelly Morse, setting everything up takes a month.
The family starts in earnest after Staunton’s Queen City Mischief & Magic celebration, retrieving the collection from storage and tackling the house a section at a time.
“We fill an entire storage unit, and then we get a U-Haul to go pick it all up and bring it all over and just start going crazy right after Mischief and Magic,” Morse said. “And it’s a lot of work.”
How long does it take?
“Thirty days,” Chris Morse said.
It takes a neighborhood
By Halloween night, however, the haunted house has become bigger than the Morse family.
“My best friend, Olin, always comes here and helps me do a tour,” Colin said.
Olin’s family pitches in, too.
Kelly Morse is usually inside keeping the animatronics running, while Chris Morse helps serve refreshments.
“Well, I’m always in the eating area, so serving up the hot chocolate for the kids,” Chris said.
Their next-door neighbor, Kathy, takes up another post.
“She’s the best neighbor,” Kelly said. “She always stands up at the front with the flashlight, and she directs people where to go and puts the light on the stairs so nobody trips and falls.”
Across the street, neighbors Mark and Joey bring bags of candy to contribute.
“So it’s kind of a group effort,” Kelly said.
The family has also built the evening around children who might not be ready for the full haunted-house experience.
As part of Punch on the Porch, an annual Newtown neighborhood Halloween event, children can find treats and snacks in an area beside the house. Behind the house, the family sets up inflatables for younger children who might find the haunted house too frightening.
“For the littles, you know, so that they have something that’s not so scary for them,” Kelly said.
Trick-or-treaters receive small bags containing candy and a toy.
Even the neighborhood dogs aren’t forgotten. A Halloween character outside holds a tray of dog treats for four-legged trick-or-treaters.
Making adults feel like kids again
Some of the adults appear to enjoy the scares as much as the children.
Chris Morse has noticed that one particular animatronic, dubbed the “soul sucker,” has developed a following. The large figure holds a baby, and a fog machine creates an effect around it.
“The fathers, they just can’t wait to see it,” Chris said. “I hit the button, and they’re thrilled. I mean, that’s their thing, is seeing the soul sucker.”
Kelly has noticed something similar over the years.
“I think we get a lot of adults feeling like kids again,” she said. “The adults really, really enjoy it.”
And that excitement is ultimately what keeps the family pulling roughly 100 containers out of storage and spending a month transforming their home year after year.
“The people love it,” Kelly said. “He loves it. I love it, and it’s really fun to see, like, all the people get excited about it.”
“Especially the kids,” Chris added.
The haunted house at 214 Church St. is free and open to the public on Halloween night only, from 5:30 to 9 p.m. The family starts at 5:30 p.m. with younger children in mind before the experience gets scarier later in the evening.
For Kelly Morse, Halloween at home started 25 years ago with pieces of Styrofoam turned into headstones before she had even finished unpacking her first house.
The decorations have since crossed state lines. The mileage on a favorite homemade sign had to be repainted. Her son has grown up posing alongside the same homemade guillotine. And in the eight years since the family arrived in Staunton, friends and neighbors have found places for themselves in the tradition, too.
What started as Kelly Morse’s love of Halloween has become something an entire neighborhood can share.
Monique Calello covers business, dining and entertainment for The News Leader. Reach her at mcalello@newsleader.com.
This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader.
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