Toil & Trouble

After spending close to $1,000 and as many hours painting plastic foam to look like old bricks, coaxing outdated sound equipment to work and turning dead branches into eerie landscapes, Gary Corb is near exhaustion by the time Halloween rolls around.

But by Nov. 1, he’s still willing to do it all over again.

Private haunted houses are a labor of love, with Halloween as the catalyst to turn 2-by-4s, household appliances and other people’s trash into graveyards, funeral parlors and dungeons.

Ask Corb why, and he’ll tell you it’s the faces--the faces of the people who come to his annual extravaganza. “When I see people’s reactions and hear their comments,” he says, “when they notice the subtleties, that’s the real magic.” For people such as Corb, the sleepless nights, the drained savings accounts and putting the lives on hold are all worth it for those few hours of glory.

“These will become gothic arches,” says Corb, 40, pointing to a pile of Water Noodles, long foam pool toys. “We saw them at Rite-Aid. Most of our show is based on trash. I saw this piece of foam rubber in someone’s garbage and thought, ‘Yes! Rocks!’ We see a mailbox, it becomes a housing device for fiber optics. Anyone can spend the money, but to have the imagination to see what something can become, that’s what we do.”

The backyard of the Studio City home he shares with his mother, Florence, serves as workshop and prop storage--a grim reaper stands in a metal shed, cardboard columns wrapped in chicken wire wait to be transformed into chapel ruins. Plants and weeds have been allowed to grow tall and tangled; they’ll be cut down and used as extra greenery.

Corb’s fascination with Halloween began 27 years ago, when at 13 he built a haunted shack as a “little diversion for the kids on the way up to the front door.” It had flickering lights, a phantom rocking chair and eerie music. That lasted until the kids had been there and done that and Corb, a musician and former film editor, knew he had to come up with something better or lose his audience.

A quarter of a century later, with some 5,000 people coming to view his house over three nights, he’s still trying to outdo himself.

A small crew of loyal friends--Steve Mann, Mark Phillips and Tim Doggett--has stuck by through the years. This united front is the key to success, says Corb: “They understand what we’re going for. There’s a similar tone throughout the show. It’s not one of those mix-and-match things where you go from the morgue into the spaceship into the laboratory.”

The design, he explains, is based not on gory slash-fests, but more on what he calls “mythology,” contrasting “profane, spiritless, lost souls with those more in touch with nature and their spirit.”

There are features such as the long wall depicting the seven stages of man, with faces that become progressively older, and eyes that seem to follow you as you walk. There are glimpses inside the house of a disappearing skeleton playing the harp and of a ghostly little girl in her room. Cobb’s own recorded music wafts through speakers. Effects are achieved through projections, scrims, mirrors, motorized mechanics, lighting and a fog machine.

In the last few days before the public is invited to come by, Corb undoubtedly will be pulling all-nighters, but he doesn’t mind.

Corb, who is consulting with Disney on some projects, says many people presume his “Hallowed Haunting Grounds” is done by special-effects professionals.

“We sometimes think, ‘Oh, maybe next year will be the last year,’ but talk to us on Nov. 1, after we feel we’ve accomplished something. There’s no talk that day of never doing this again, just how can we do it better?”

Corb isn’t alone in his love affair with things ghostly. According to the Halloween Assn., this holiday is now a $6-billion-plus industry, with people shelling out megabucks for decorations and candy.

The Internet has become a mecca for haunt fans. Halloween Web “rings” feature hundreds of sites, ranging from merchandise to private haunts around the country to tips on creating good fog (it’s a mixture of glycerine and water). And adults--especially boomers--are widely credited with elevating Halloween to a popularity ranking just below Christmas.

“So often we’re just so burdened by rules and responsibilities; one day a year, you just need a break,” says Rochelle Santopoalo, editor of Illinois-based Happy Halloween magazine and founder of the Global Halloween Alliance, a group dedicated to the holiday. “You need to be given permission to do all the silly things you want to do throughout the year.”

*

For 23-year-old Damien Fakes, it’s the thrill of scaring people silly that’s propelled him, his family and friends to construct an elaborate haunted house in the front yard of the Long Beach home he shares with his father, Ed. This year’s theme is “Haunted Christmas,” complete with evil elves, giant reindeer and a Santa who’s not exactly jolly.

The whole thing started simply enough 10 years ago, when Fakes, his father, older brother Bryce and some friends donned masks and scared neighborhood trick-or-treaters. That evolved into placing some fake tombstones out front, then building a small facade, then a bigger one and adding enclosed rooms. Last year the crowd peaked at 300 and Fakes says the neighborhood and local police have supported their efforts.

This haunt seriously took off about five years ago when childhood friends of Fakes’ wanted to get involved. The crew consists of four sets of brothers (including the Fakes) and among them are a graphic artist, a longshoreman, a biochemist and an architect. Except for Bryce’s girlfriend, Cathy Ramirez, the participants are male, as seems to be the case at most haunted houses.

Each contributes $200 per year to the project, and Fakes, a Cal State Fullerton liberal studies student and student teacher, figures $4,000 has been spent in the last five years.

“Halloween is our favorite holiday around here,” he says. “I guess it’s because we have so much fun working on it. Even when tempers flare, and that’s to be expected when you’re working till 4 in the morning, when we’re finished, we’re amazed by what we’ve done.”

*

Like Fakes, 16-year-old Jonathan Beach of Newport Beach has a penchant for scaring people. “I just like the looks on their faces,” he says gleefully. “It’s just funny.”

It’s no wonder that Beach has been embellishing his house with all manner of Halloween items for 10 years, since his mother bought him an electronically animated witch (it still sits in the window).

This year there’s a knife-wielding skeleton hovering over a masked body outside his Balboa Peninsula home; previous years have seen an enormous flying bat and bicycle-riding “Scream” character, drawing about 100 visitors.

Beach’s mother, Jeanne, recalls taking her son trick-or-treating when he was younger: “He was fascinated with walking through the neighborhood and seeing what people had on display. You could entertain him completely with that.”

These days it takes a little more. Skeletons, corpses, a coffin, glow-in-the-dark cobwebs, a fog machine and a huge, black spider web have been added to the collection. A disco ball placed outside wasn’t a hit. “It started annoying the neighbors, so we took it down,” Jonathan explains.

This year he finally convinced his parents to turn part of the inside of their home into a haunted house, featuring a dark, scary hallway, funeral parlor, cemetery and a few people waiting in the dark.

“I’ve been wanting to do an indoor haunted house for a couple of years,” says Jonathan, a sophomore at Mardan Center in Irvine, “but my parents kept saying ‘no’ because it would be too much of a mess with people walking through.” (Sister Brittany, 15, doesn’t get into the festivities.)

He figures his budget this year is about $200. Things are done on the cheap whenever possible. Chicken wire forms the inside of the dummy corpses, a cardboard coffin came from Sav-On, and other decorations from Costco and Halloween stores. Money comes from his part-time job, an allowance and odd jobs. A splurge this year was a fog machine for $50--a floor model, sold at a discount. Occasionally supplements come from the Bank of Mom and Dad.

Both parents believe Jonathan is motivated by creativity rather than gory slasher movies. “This is total make-believe,” says Jeanne. “He’s never picked up anything from television, and he doesn’t enjoy watching those types of movies. He just likes those warehouses that have all the Halloween stuff.”

Jonathan says he wants to study set design in college. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the end of this haunted house.

“Don’t worry,” he says with a wide grin. “I’ll be back.”

Gary Corb’s “Hallowed Haunting Grounds” takes place Friday through Sunday, from 7 p.m. to midnight at 4343 Babcock Ave., Studio City. Damien Fakes’ “Haunted Christmas” is Sunday from 6 to 10 p.m. at 2495 Golden Ave., Long Beach. Jonathan Beach’s “Haunted House” is Sunday from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at 318 Alvarado Place, Balboa Peninsula, Newport Beach.

Spooky Guide on the Web

* For a complete list of Southland Halloween activities--everything from haunted houses and frightful fashions to horror flicks and monster nightclub parties--go to the Calendar Live Web site: https://www.calendarlive.com/halloween.