'Make it bigger every year': Halloween a happy time for some Calgarians

CALGARY -

When Shane Harrop's son decided he wanted to scare people on Halloween rather than go trick-or-treating, the spooky display in his front yard began to grow.

Now it takes up his yard and garage, along with a neighbour's yard in the southeast community of Douglasdale.

"I try to keep it, budget-wise, as low as possible," said Harrop. "But unfortunately I sort of have an issue and as I see things come up and sales come up and whatever, I like to add to it and I want to make it bigger every year."

He started working on this year's display in the first week of October and makes many of the props himself. It takes upward of 60 hours to complete the set up.

His front yard show is filled with lights, fog machines and even some of his friends in costumes throughout the display to scare people. And the scaring starts a week before All Hallows' Eve.

This year he's been getting 60 to 70 visitors a night. He anticipates even more on Oct. 31.

"The most I've ever had is about 250 to 260," said Harrop. "So I plan this year for about 350 originally and then it kind of blew up on me, so we have enough candy right now to probably handle about 650 kids, right and I just I just don't know what to expect."

Harrop is accepting food donations for the Veteran's Food Bank.

Over in the northeast community of Marlborough Park, the Jassani family is busy transforming their front lawn into 16-year-old Rahil's Halloween vision while he is at school.

"This year, he decided to help out the Calgary Food bank especially after hearing all the shortages and everything," said Akil Jassani, Rahil's older brother.

"So with that, you can't exactly say no to the kid once he puts that in, so we're kind of helping him set up this year with a lot of his own homemade props and stuff."

The family says they won't finish the display until 3 p.m. on Oct. 31 because they want it to be a surprise for families coming to visit the home that night.

"We've got one of our food trucks out here, it's called Confetti, they're going to basically be doing anything sold that day, 100 per cent of the proceeds is going to the food bank," said Akil.

"So we're gonna donate our time and there'll be some mini donuts, ice cream, we're even gonna have a milkshake that has just a bunch of eyes all over it, because somebody is always watching you."

The family is anticipating 300 kids stopping by.

In the southeast community of McKenzie Town, Michell McDougall changes Halloween themes in her front year every year.

"I re-purpose a lot of the stuff and then I just kind of come up with a new theme and then try and make something out of it," said McDougall.

"So I've done scarecrow, I've done western theme I've done carnival, witch, and this one is the fakery."

The 'fakery' is a play on bakery and is inspired by the story of Hansel and Gretel.

"With the fakery I need the body parts so I can make these gruesome desserts for the kids to enjoy, so it was kind of fun coming up with the idea, you know, fingers, ears, eyes and nose," she said.

The one thing in common these Halloween fanatics all have is they enjoy seeing the smiles on the kids faces when they come for a treat.