Skeletons in her closet

A spooky stockpile of Halloween collectibles makes an eerie exhibit

STORY SUMMARY »

Halloween is a never-ending holiday for Norma Pershing. "Halloween is 365 days a year for this collector," she said. "I find Halloween items on eBay, at garage sales and swap meets."

Pershing displays collectibles dating to the 1950s throughout the year, including figurines, noisemakers, lollipop holders, candles and even vintage candy bags and napkins.

"Most of the Halloween items are considered rare and in high demand as most items were thrown away after one season, unlike Christmas, where decorations and ornaments are wrapped up and saved for the next year," she said.

Vintage items are hard to find locally. "I suspect a lot of the collectibles never made it over on the boat across the ocean, or a lot of local people don't really have ties to autumn like they do in the mainland."

As Halloween approaches, she decorates the front yard of her Miliani home and all of the rooms in the house, including the bathrooms.

The entrance to her home has been transformed into a small graveyard, and the dining room table looks as though it would fit into Count Dracula's castle. A little Halloween village display consumes one room. And throughout the house you'll find skeletons in chairs, spookily decorated tables and eerie tombstones.

One of Pershing's treasures is a favorite from her childhood, the 1971 Milton Bradley board game Which Witch? She pulls it from a closet, demonstrating how large cardboard walls separate rooms, such as the Bat's Ballroom and the Spell Cell.

"I've always liked spooky stories and stuff, since I was a young girl," she said. "The free candy and cherished childhood memories cemented my love for Halloween."

---

FULL STORY »

It takes a village -- of the damned

A Halloween hamlet is a real ghost town, complete with castle

When Norma Pershing ordered her first Halloween house on eBay, she didn't realize what she was getting into. "One piece led to another, then some 78 pieces later, the Halloween Village was born," she said.

Her first piece, Grimsley Manor, featured flashing lights, sounds of thunder and people screaming. Over the years she added pieces, to the point that a display that once fit on a bookshelf now fills an entire room. "I actually have too many houses and can't display them all."

It's not enough to just set out the houses and plug them in. There's landscaping to consider, and the placement of streets, street lights (which really glow), people, plants, trees, hills and fences.

Feeling that her display could use some zest, Pershing began purchasing DVDs on embellishing Halloween displays. "I also bought books on miniature railroad modeling to figure out how to make the landscaping better."

She's experimented with ground covers, from turf-covered mats to moss. This year, jagged popsicle sticks make a spooky pier leading to a haunted carousel where skeletons, witches and the like ride in a continuous circle.

Creating depth perception and dimension is the hardest aspect, Pershing said.

This year she decided to add dimension by carving construction-grade Styrofoam sheets that had been sitting in her garage for two years. "My husband was so delighted to learn that I was finally going to take the plunge and chop them up and fashion them into mountains and platforms," she said.

The dense grade of Styrofoam needed to be cut with a saw, and the edges melted with a hot-foam cutter. Three pieces took two hours, and that did not include the painting. "I attract a lot of attention in the neighborhood just working in my garage."

The largest carved platform holds the Castle Blackstone, with the house perched high atop a hill. "Since it's a regal castle, it must sit on the top of the mountain and serve as the focal piece." Another elaborately carved platform serves as backdrop for a ghost ship.

"I fiddled with a bunch of techniques to make the platforms more interesting," she said. "First a coat of gray primer was applied, then black on the edges to give it depth. I also used a dry-brush technique on the foam ridges that were cut out with the hot-foam tool to give it texture."

Among Pershing's favorite pieces: Helga's House of Fortunes, where a fortuneteller reads fortunes; the Haunted Fun House, with a boy spinning around and around inside; the Witch Way Flight School, where young witches circle in the air, some upside down, as they haven't mastered the technique yet; and Lemax's Rest in Pieces Mausoleum, with its mortician, zombie in a drawer and skeleton sitting up in a coffin. "Unfortunately, the zombie doesn't come out of the drawer anymore. Some kid broke it about two years ago," she said.

Other village components include a skeleton on a swing, a pumpkin patch, a cemetery, an amusement park and spooky trees with eerily lit faces.

"The village is a treat for all the neighbors," Pershing said. "They love to come in and marvel at its sights."

Although her home isn't open to the public, strangers have found her.

"I've had strangers coming onto our home to look at the village. We even had one visitor from Taiwan come with my friend who lives in Hawaii Kai. He made a special trip out to Mililani with his Taiwanese friend and her daughter just to look at the village, since they don't have Halloween in Taiwan."