Think the world can’t get any more frightening?
Think again. Just when you think you've seen it all, along comes Halloween – the annual event specifically designed to crank your personal scare-o-meter even further than it already is.
And what better way to celebrate the spectacle – and the people who treat it with a special reverence from which we all benefit – than the latest edition of the ghoulishly thrilling Halloween Houses of Penticton.
This year, we check out some of the wildest residential displays in the region and talk to a couple of folks who carry the Halloween banner high all year long.
It makes for deliciously demented reading.
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We start not in Penticton but a few kilometers north in the village of Naramata, where a brand new and thoroughly impressive haunt has mysteriously materialized on the grounds of a local motel.
It's called, fittingly enough, the Cursed Courtyard.
It was on a dark and rainy night two years ago just prior to Halloween 2023 that PentictonNow first made the acquaintance of Naramata resident and designated regional fright-monger Blaine Gerlach.
Gerlach had morphed her pleasant residential home near the heart of the hamlet into a Halloween House worthy of the drive north. We made the trip and were glad we did.
But now, Gerlach has upped the ante considerably. The artist, who runs a gift/treat shop just down the street in a spare building of a small motel called Naramata Courtyard Suites, had a brilliant idea – turn the entire motel, which closes after summer, into a denizen of the dead.
"I'm an illustrator and I design a bunch of local products I sell in my shop," she explained earlier this week.
"But I don't sell online, and everyone told me it was a mistake not to sell online, not to ship, not to do wholesale. And all these people claim brick and mortar is dead."
So in the Cursed Courtyard, Gerlach has ingeniously demonstrated just how dead brick and mortar can be.
"We turned the motel into a strip mall, with stores that would serve the dead," she said with a devious grin. "And each window display shows what those stores would sell should they exist.
"They said brick and mortar was dead, so I made it dead. It's a pretty fun walk-through."
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Indeed it is. It's a sophisticated window-shopping experience that'll please folks of all ages. And yes, there's enough oomph here to elicit shrieks from the unsuspecting.
"The doors (to the make-believe shops) are locked because they're only open during the witching hour," said Gerlach, who was quick to add that visitors to the 2026 and beyond version may well be able to enter those shops and interact with all that lies inside.
We can't wait.
The Cursed Cottage runs every night this week except Halloween itself. Admission is $5, all of which benefits a local family dealing with cancer.
And while you’re out there, you can drop by Gerlach's own home, also nattily decorated, just a spell up the road at 485 Robinson.
Clowns are always gruesome. But the clowns at 122 Cleland Drive, and the imaginative, stylish walk-through graveyard-ish environment that surrounds them, are next level.
It’s a glorious ode to horror that's likely without peer in the South Okanagan. The question is: Can you personally handle the sights…and the sounds?
"We usually start setting up in early September," says rightfully proud lead Cleland Clown caretaker David Clutterbuck, who with wife Dawn Wampler and nephew Grady Rieter, put together one of the finest front yard frightfests we've ever seen.
"We’ve been doing it for quite a few years now and it’s grown progressively bigger," said Clutterbuck. "And gradually, the whole neighbourhood is getting into it with more decorations."
But there's no arguing that Clutterbuck's maniac clown asylum is top of the pops.
"These days, kids from all over come and just stare at it as soon as they’re out of school," said Wampler of an attraction that incorporates not only high-end animated clowns but weather, lighting and sound effects too.
"And so many people drive by and stop as we lead up to Halloween."
Last year, Clutterbuck and family assembled 650 bags of candy for the big day. They ran out. So they turned to loose candies. They ran out of those too.
New entities for 2025 include a truly repugnant two-faced clown and an organ grinder with a terrifying surprise.
'Nuff said.
The display runs every day from 2:30 to 9:30 PM through Halloween. Donations (for the SPCA and a local cat rescue service) are welcome.
Dallas Almond and Ryan Lochbaum
When Ryan Lochbaum and Dallas Almond moved to Penticton's West Bench neighbourhood five years ago, they figured they'd ultimately have the brightest place on a somewhat dark-ish hillside.
They figured right.
Today, mostly though the efforts of Lochbaum, a guy admittedly obsessed with both Halloween and Christmas, their home at 808 Vedette is a beacon in the night.
Just how obsessed is Lochbaum? When the couple put their home up for sale earlier this year, they knew they had an expiration date.
"When we put it up," said Lochbaum, "the rule was that if it didn’t sell by September 1st, it would come off the market because I have to get my Halloween stuff up."
And what stuff it is. Lochbaum and Almond's front yard is veritably coated in Halloween magnificence. And that’s not all of it. He has more in reserve.
"The next house we buy," said partner Almond, "has to have proper frontage so people can see his efforts. He starts getting it into it in July."
The preference would be acreage so Lochbaum can create the corn maze he's always wanted.
In the meantime, the display at their current home switches on daily at sunset and switches off at 9:30 PM. The excitement cranks up even further on All Hallow's Eve when the two amp up their driveway even further and give away "really good candy" at the top.
Nothing much has changed at what is arguably the most celebrated Halloween house in the city.
It still packs more content per square foot, much of it impressively pieced together DIY-style, than any other spot in the region.
It still attracts more looky-loos than any other private property.
And it's still situated in the midst of what is arguably the best Halloween neighbourhood around -- the "K" streets.
And all of the above makes Armand Granger's stunning ode to the occasion one of the very finest spots to visit on the night of the 31st.
When PentictonNow launched its Halloween Houses series in the pre-COVID days of 2018, our very first stop was the rented home of Steve Beliveau at 783 Westminster Ave.
When the entire 700 block of Westminster was wiped out to make way for townhouses a couple years ago, we thought we'd lost track of Beliveau for good.
But we just found him, and his wife Melinda, a few blocks away at 588 Braid Street. And they’re still doing their Halloween thing.
"We've been doing this for 12 years or so," said Beliveau, the nephew of Montreal Canadiens hockey star Jean.
"You know, we just love Halloween. We love to make kids happy. We love when they come here and say, 'Wow, look at all this stuff.'"
The Beliveau's display runs every night through Halloween.
Miranada Mezzatesta had every reason to give up.
The Halloween fanatic moved to Penticton ten years ago and with partner Chris Green concocted a slick display in the yard of their home on Eckhardt Avenue.
But almost immediately, she was vandalized.
"We had some animatronics stolen," she recounted. "And two tombstones trashed. A skeleton went missing. It was really sad. That's a lot of time and money invested, and to have it all taken away was super disheartening."
But Mezzatesta wouldn’t quit. She'd just rearrange.
So last year she moved her display, and her expertise, to her sister-in-law's house on the other side of the city. And to prevent further vandalism, she wouldn't set it up 'til the day of.
She says it was a hit. So much so that she’ll do it again this year.
"It's kind of my life goal to be that one house that everyone talks about," she said. "There are better houses than mine, but I think it's still pretty great."
Along the way, she became the regional Halloween guru.
"I now run a Facebook page called Okanagan Halloween Lovers," she said. "It's just basically a hub for all things Halloween. If you have a great display or an event or if you're selling any of your pieces or want to trade, it's the place to go."
Mezzatesta's also compiling a list of local Halloween houses – places to see and places to go trick or treating. Head to the Okanagan Halloween Lovers page here for all the info.
Our final stop of 2025 isn't really a stop at all. It’s more of a drive-by. Nevertheless, we think it's worthy.
It's here on a steep slope on Carmi Avenue – where there are no sidewalks and very little pull-out room – that local artists Scott Panov and Heather Williams turn old propane tanks into cool "Junk O'Lanterns."
"We do metal art and we do it all with recycled materials," said Williams. "We started these a couple years ago.
"I hand draw them and Scott plasma cuts the design on the tanks. He takes the valves off, removes all the gas, cuts the bottoms out and then plasma cuts them."
The result is quite stunning.
"I saw something on Instagram and I thought I’d take the idea and make it my own," said Panov. "We focus on pop culture. So we have the "Hank Tank" (Hank Hill from King of the Hill), the Wu Tank (a take-off on Wu Tang Clan), Jack Skellington and more.
"We’ve sold and gifted quite a few. They're spread across the city."
Due to the logistics of their location, Williams and Panov don’t encourage visits. But you can get a good look while driving down Carmi.
Alternately, head to Panov's Facebook page here.
Merry Halloween.
