HANOVER TOWNSHIP, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — Halloween is just eight days away and many homeowners are finishing up decorations to get a fright out of trick-or-treaters.
To scare or not to scare, it’s a question homeowners contemplate when it comes to decorating for Halloween.
For homeowner John Sipper on Main Road in Hanover Township, the answer is easy.
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“I just love Halloween. I love the whole season, the time of year,” said Sipper.
For more than a decade he has transformed his home into a graveyard with 50 tombstones and 25 creatures.
But you can’t find these at the store.
“Yeah you’re not going to buy most of this stuff, it’s all homemade so,” Sipper explained.
Creatures like the witch, are made up of PVC pipes, wood, and some motors. Her mask coming all the way from Germany is about 10 years old.
As for the tombstones and the mausoleum, they were all handmade with foam.
"The individual bricks around the entryway edges, about 130 of them, they’re all hand-carved. Each one of them individually shaved cut, shaped, and then glued into place,” said Sipper.
He says the decorating starts at the end of September, somehow cranking this display out in about four days.
“After the fence goes up, then I lay out all the tombstones, and then based on where the holes are for the tombstones, that’s where the people go, and build out from there,” said Sipper.
The construction of homemade animatronics and attention to detail is a way he gets to test his creativity.
And although it grows every year, he keeps it to a minimum scare factor for the kids.
“With so many trick-or-treaters, I don’t try to make it too gory and things like that, we like to make it more traditional graveyard and those kinds of stuff,” Sipper added.
Sipper says the number one question he gets is where does he store all of the decorations? He said he has two sheds specifically for Halloween.
