Nightmare on Moore Street : Halloween: A family transforms their Mar Vista yard and house into a spooky castle with eerie sights and sounds. The neighbors think it’s a scream.

Some eerie sights and sounds are emanating from the house at 3515 Moore St. these days, shattering the usual tranquility of a tree-lined block in Mar Vista.

At night, wailing and groaning, the sound of rushing wind and howling cats comes from the sinister, black-draped dwelling that sits in the middle of a spooky, neglected graveyard.

But the neighbors aren’t ready to call in the Ghostbusters. Rather, they’re enjoying the Halloween spirit brought to the block by members of Jose Gonzalez Gonzalez’s family, who pulled out all the stops and turned their house into a haunted castle, complete with graveyard and soundtrack of spooky sounds.

“Every night, we have cars passing by, stopping, asking us questions,” said Gonzalez, an actor who has appeared in numerous films and television shows, including a role in the old “Cisco Kid” TV series in the ‘50s.

“And all the neighbors say how they’re proud of our kids. They make the neighborhood alive,” he said.

The Halloween display is the brainchild of Gonzalez’s daughter, Miroslava Gonzalez, and two of his grandchildren, Terry Tigner, 22, and his sister, Tessie, 18. Miroslava said they were motivated by a desire to bring a bit more festivity back to the celebration of Halloween.

“Nobody does it anymore,” she said. “The Halloween spirit was fading, with the bad candy and stuff. So I figured, with this, maybe a little Halloween spirit would come back.”

They decorated not only the front yard but the inside of the house and back yard as well. Then they threw a party last Saturday and invited the neighborhood, as well as just about anyone else who had come by and shown interest as they were setting the yard up. More than 300 people showed up.

The decorations in the back yard and the house have since been removed, but the front yard will be a neighborhood attraction until after Halloween.

It took two weeks of work by the two Tigners and their aunt to put the scene together. To create the effect of an old castle, they draped the length of the architecturally distinctive flat-roofed house, built along with the others on the block in 1949 by noted architect Gregory Ain, in sheets of black cloth. The castle facade, with turrets and a barred dungeon window, has been set up along the roof.

A rickety picket fence encloses the front yard, which has been turned into a graveyard featuring the names of such horror movie luminaries as Freddy Krueger from “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” Jason from “Friday the 13th,” and Michael Myers from “Halloween” on headstones. Aside from its “occupants,” the graveyard also has a distinctive odor. Jose’s wife, Ventura Gonzalez, wouldn’t allow her grandchildren to dig up her lawn, so they used fertilizer to form the dirt mounds for the graves.

Two dummies in nooses hanging from trees on either side of the house frame the scene. And the centerpiece is a witch with her caldron, which will be boiling over with a strange brew come Halloween night, thanks to a bit of dry ice.

“We’ll have everything set up for Halloween,” said Terry Tigner. He plans to add strobe lights that night to create the effect of a lightning storm.

Just as creative as the design of the haunted castle was the process they went through to find materials. The wood for the picket fence and the tombstones was recycled from discarded pallets. Tumbleweeds scattered around the yard were imported from around the Pomona Freeway. And the dress worn by a skeleton bride is the $1,200 wedding gown that belonged to Terry and Tessie Tigner’s mother, Mandy Mangione.

“I always knew I’d find another use for it,” Mangione said.

The soundtrack came courtesy of a friend of Terry Tigner’s who works at Paramount Studios. Tigner is careful not to play the tape too loud. “I don’t want the neighbors to get annoyed,” he said.

The sound effects are so realistic that his grandmother sometimes forgets it’s just a tape.

“Even my grandma says, ‘What was that noise?’ ” he said. “There’s a lady crying at the beginning of the tape, and my grandma gets kind of nervous. She’s always telling me to turn it down.”

The reaction of the neighbors seems to be generally positive.

“It’s great, especially when they have the tape going. It’s really eerie,” said Cindy Beeman, who lives next door.

Across the street, Susannah Brin said she appreciates the work that went into the display.

“I think he really worked hard on it and put a lot of effort into it,” she said. “I think it’s sort of fun.”

But the greatest fans of the haunted castle are the neighborhood children.

“I like it because it’s spooky, and it has a lot of dead people,” said Rachel Rosenfeld, 7, who rode over on her bike with some friends to take a look at the house.

Her friend, Robin Davidson, 7, thought it was “creepy,” but said she wasn’t scared by it, “because I don’t believe in ghosts.”

But Robin’s mother, Leslie Davidson, wasn’t so sure her daughter and her friends would have the same reaction when they returned on Halloween night.

“They say they’re brave,” she said. “But we’ll see.”