All the fun of the scare was on offer at Maze on Medallion in Palmerston North this year.
All the fun of the scare was on offer at Maze on Medallion in Palmerston North this year.
Ghoulies and ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties, and all kinds of things that go bump in the night were to be found in a suburban Palmerston North street last week.
Trick-and-treaters, along with adults ready for a fright in the night, ventured to the end of Medallion Court, Kelvin Grove, where resident Andrew Murphy had created a scary space for people to enjoy during Halloween.
Andrew says it’s not the first time he’s done this.
“I think this is the fifth year I have done it now. It started as just a bit of a windy maze in the driveway with not really any decorations or anything, and now each Halloween I try to improve it.”
While the place is known as Maze on Medallion, it’s now more of a scare house than a maze, he says.
“It started as an actual maze with dead ends, meaning people had to turn back on themselves. A maze was something different and quite easy to make out of pallets and things. Its turned into more of a scare house now with no dead ends, but I just kept the name.”
There were more than a couple of skeletons to be found hiding in this house.
As the place gained popularity with trick-or-treaters, the change from maze to scare house was for safety reasons, Andrew says.
“Dead ends don’t mix with lots of people, they just end up bumping into each other.”
Creating the scare house each year takes him a few days, he says, with this year’s scare house taking him three days to completely assemble.
“I haven’t kept track of how many hours in total I’ve spent, but I’ve been chipping away at wall panels for the last couple of months to step it up for this year.”
The scare house consists of separate “rooms” each with a theme, he says.
“So each year I improve them, or swap out ones I didn’t like. Mostly everything gets reused in some way and added to each time.”
When it comes to creating the decorations, Andrew says it’s a mix of buying and making.
“I will buy decorations from shops where I can; Look Sharp often has good stuff and now they are in Palmy it’s a lot easier to shop there. Op shops are good for finding things that can work for Halloween, and I make the rest out of foam, wood, and some 3D printing.”
Each room in the scare house has its own theme.
While Andrew doesn’t keep track of what the decorations cost each year, he says the candy “certainly adds up”.
“I probably spent $200 on that alone this year.”
As well as the kids event where they could visit the maze and enjoy trick-or-treating fun on Tuesday last week, Andrew opened the maze up to all ages to explore, minus the candy. One session was on Halloween itself, while the other was held the night before.
“The Halloween eve event was really just to give people a chance to come through if they couldn’t make it on Halloween. It also gave the scarers a chance to practise and get familiar with this year’s setup. Also, it gets crazy busy on Halloween and people turned away last year because the line was too long.”
Entry to all the events was free, and Andrew says he does it simply because he enjoys it.
“Halloween is unique in that it requires costumes so kids can dress up as whatever they want. Things like Christmas displays aren’t really interactive, you just go and look at the lights, so Halloween gives us a chance to really interact with everyone, plus its fun trying to scare people.”
