For every Hallowe’en in the past 20-odd years Calvin Simons has turned his house into a spectacle and opened it up to his neighbourhood.

Like everyone else he had to pause in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic but by the time October rolled around this year he was determined not to let the kids down.

On Monday, the Cedar Hill, Warwick resident turned on the lights and invited people to walk or drive by, and take a look.

“We were trying to get it done for Saturday and Sunday but last week the weather was terrible,” he said. “Being that I went through the process of building it I thought I’d just do it after Hallowe’en – anybody who wants to come by and see it, that’s fine.

“It was just something for the kids in the neighbourhood. I stay two minutes away from Purvis [Primary] School. [The students] would come across and ask: ʽAre you doing the haunted house? Are you doing the haunted house?’ And I'd say, ʽYep, I’m doing it guys.’”

Mr Simons has loved Hallowe’en since he was a child. His aunt Alice held an annual party at her Devonshire home that he never missed.

“We would go down here and bob for apples and do all kinds of stuff. My cousins and I would walk all over Loyal Hill tricking and treating and we would come back and have fun. It was something that I did as a youngster and something that I wanted my daughters to experience when I had a family.”

Mr Simons’s early parties were for his students at West End Primary School, where he taught PE, health science and social studies for 25 years.

“I used to do it for the kids; it was just something you did in the schools,” he said. “I eventually brought some of the stuff home and set it up on my porch and then it went from my porch to my garage and then it got to the point where I was building a structure outside my house.”

As the years went by designing and creating elaborate haunted houses became “a labour of love”.

“Sometimes I had people who would dress up in costumes inside the haunted house – friends and family would come,” said Mr Simons, who joined the Department of Youth, Sport and Recreation after he left West End Primary but has since retired.

“It was like a maze. You would go in and it would take you anywhere between five and ten minutes to walk through.”

To keep things interesting for the neighbourhood, he changed his designs each year. Dracula, vampires and “spiders’ webs that you literally have to walk through” have all been part of Mr Simons’s annual fright fest.

He does it all, according to his daughter, Calvina, with a plan that he draws on paper every year.

“Sometimes in the haunted houses I would have it where people would have to get down and crawl on their hands and knees, but that would be very limited because sometimes there would be some older people going through it and it was a little challenging for them to get back up after somebody has scared the life out of them,” he laughed.

Mr Simons’s haunted houses usually took about two weeks to design, build and install; he finished this year's drive-by display in half that time.

"I've taken some of the stuff that I would normally have inside the haunted house and put it on display outside. It made the drive-by a little faster [to build].

“Sometimes I get very creative. For me the drive-by is really stepping out of the box. I prefer a more controlled environment. With the lighting from the cars you don’t really get that scary effect. It's more just a display like how at Christmas time people decorate the front of their houses.”

This year especially, traffic was a huge concern as Mr Simons was mindful that people from outside the neighbourhood might want to have a peek.

“That’s one of the fears I have. I don’t want the traffic to be backed up down to Middle Road. So we encourage people to take a look, move along quickly and just experience it.”

Judging by the count of Ziplock bags the family stuffed with candy and handed out, more than 85 children enjoyed Monday night’s display. On Wednesday he packed it all away, until next year.