Dazzling Halloween displays: Wichita area residents cook up ghoulish surprises for trick-or-treaters

Spiders haven’t been super-active just in the landscape of Kansas this fall. They’ve grown to enormous proportions and have been seen devouring certain houses around Wichita leading up to Halloween.

In addition to the traditional Halloween Street — aka the 100 and 200 blocks of North Broadview — and environs in College Hill, area residents are cooking up lots of ghoulish surprises for trick-or-treaters.

Included in their decorations at 2208 W. 18th St., Dustin, Johanna and Max Commer have a haunted campsite with a lighted tent, relaxing skeleton, and the skeleton’s little one roasting a ball of cobwebs over a candy-corn fire.

Gerald Graves — that’s his real name — has been “scaring children” for 30 years and is back at it again this Halloween at 3801 E. Funston with spiders, a cemetery on the porch, scary music, fog and some live ghouls.

And in Colwich, Steve and Linda West put up posters around town promising a full-size candy bar for every 10th visitor at their “Nightmare on 6th Street.” The house at 412 S. 6th Street, with its askew shutters, haunting music, lightning and thunder, graveyard, and demon trapped in the basement, has been transformed into the Chateau of the Tormented going on 30 Halloweens. Steve West says that 200 to 300 trick-or-treaters usually come by.

“We have parents who come with their kids, and the parents came when they were kids,” West says. He’s been putting up the full-size-candy-bar posters for the past three or four years.

“To go through all this work and expense for two hours on Halloween, I just want to get as many kids as I can.”

Joshua Clyborne will have his Halloween light display at 6726 W. Ocieo St. on all night on Halloween and on Sunday night as well. He has 4,900 lights playing to nine musical sequences when the car radio is tuned to 106.9 FM.

Here’s a sampling of some of Wichita’s haunted residential sights:

This story was originally published October 29, 2015 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Dazzling Halloween displays: Wichita area residents cook up ghoulish surprises for trick-or-treaters."