PHOTOS: Halloween Houses of Penticton, 103 Devon Drive

They say all roads lead to OK Falls.

Actually, nobody says that. But here in our series on Halloween houses, the sentiment is apropos.

We've already been to Naramata, Trout Creek, the West Bench, the K streets and a clown cemetery on Cleland Drive in our attempt to document the most impressive and/or most alarming residential Halloween displays in the region.

And now we're finishing up in Okanagan Falls. More precisely, at 103 Devon Dr., just a couple houses from the junction of Eastside Road and McLean Creek Road, at least three kilometers north of the OK Falls main drag on the east side of Skaha Lake.

And it's definitely worth the drive.

Our first exposure to 103 Devon Dr., the home of school teachers Josh and Jackie Heinrich and their kids Bree and Reid, happened during the pre-Christmas run-up of 2022.

We'd heard the rumours from afar that a house in the OKF had stepped up the Christmas lighting game to a whole other level.

Rather than standard decorative LEDs and traditional ornaments, the Heinrichs had jumped on the crest of a new high-end, high-tech trend.

Loosely called "pixel lights" or "pixel shows," the flashy technology involves small LEDs (dozens or hundreds or thousands of them depending on your budget) that are mounted to "props" (think of pins and pincushions) to create patterns, shapes and/or characters.

The props, which can be many sizes and shapes, are then tied or strapped to the exterior of a house, or stood upright in a yard, or positioned wherever they look best. Get enough pixeled props and you've got a heck of a whole-house show.

But the coolest part is that each pixel can be programmed to do what you want it to do – on, off, colour adjustments and more. Most pixel display owners stick a few speakers in their front yard and sync the lights to the music.

We'd seen stuff like this on video sharing sites like YouTube. But until we went to Devon Drive for real, we'd never seen one in person.

And we were awestruck.

Turns out the 2023 Christmas show was so popular that pixel prez Josh Heinrich opted to put another one together for 2023 Halloween. And it’s just as captivating.

"I think we're all addicted to it now," he laughed. "We just saw how much fun people had with it last year, so we're going to keep growing it for Halloween and Christmas."

According to Heinrich, the Halloween show, consisting of an incredible 16,000 pixels, fired up Oct. 15th and will finish on the 31st. Then the Christmas display will debut in late November/early December.

And yes, both attract a lot of cars and even more people.

"Most of our neighbours really enjoy it," said Heinrich, hoping everyone who shows up will respect the properties around his. "They walk by in the middle of the summer and they say they can’t wait to see what the lights will look like at Christmas."

We asked Heinrich to clue us in a bit on all that went into creating the show, and he said it all starts by sourcing the materials.

"You order the bits and pieces from all kinds of different vendors," he said. "Some are in the US, some in China. I went direct to factories in China for a bunch of my stuff.

"And then it's a huge amount of time. I buy the plastic props separately from the lights, then I have to hand push the pixels into that prop. And then you just have to be creative how you get that prop to sit on your house.

"It's all DIY. I mount things on PVC pipe and then clip the pipe to the house. A bunch of stuff is hanging with chains. I have props on the roof that have custom-made stands. You just do whatever you can."

According to Heinrich, pixel show directors often buy pre-programmed sequences to mesh with given tunes.

"There are people who do sequence programming for a living," he said. "Apparently it takes 40 to 50 hours per song.

"But even though I buy their program, it probably takes me two to three hours per song to customize it for my display. And I now have 22 Halloween-themed songs."

Heinrich, who says he now has a laptop specifically for his pixel work, estimates he's spent "thousands of hours" on his home's dual holiday displays, which together are called "Lake City Lights."

Indeed, guests can choose the next tune in the queue by pulling up the Lake City Lights website while they're on the physical site.

We did just that with Aqua's "Barbie Girl" and Metallica's "Master of Puppets." It was so...much...fun.

And with that, our tour of the spookiest and the showiest Halloween Houses of Penticton comes to an end.

Have a great Oct 31st. And don't let the bed bugs bite. We hear they're...monstrous.