Spooky Hollows Home Haunt
Halloween 2024: It’s the return of Mr. Sticky! “The Cult of Mr. Sticky” is a 15-minute show about a group of followers who worship Spooky Hollow’s resident cryptic. This is another sidewalk show, not a walkthrough.
Dates: October 25-27, 31; November 1-2, 7-10pm.
Hours: “The Cult of Mr. Sticky” runs continually from 7-10pm, with a 5-minute break in-between each show.
Admission: Free, but Spooky Hollows accepts donations of canned goods to go to local charities.
Location: 16418 Gilmore Street, Van Nuys, CA 91406
Website: spookyhollows.com
Quick Take: Since abandoning its walkthrough, Spooky Hollows offers an impressive combination of yard display and show, using audio, video, and mechanical effects to tell a story. Though not as well-known as some of the longer-lived Halloween Home Haunts, Spooky Hollows is awesome stuff!
Spooky Hollows Archive: Check out news and reviews about the Spooky Hollows home haunt…
Spooky Hollows Home Haunt History & Information
Loaded with decorations and props, The Spooky Hollows began haunting in 2011, offering a self-described a yard display suitable for all ages. Over the years, the yard haunt morphed through several themes (The Graveyard Emerges, The Spooky Hollows Graveyard Sale, Legends of the Swamp), keeping its horrors fresh from season to season. More recent themes tend to focus on the underground cellar dweller, Mr. Sticky, but sometimes the show veers into Ghostbusters territory.
A walk through was added in 2016. The front yard was still decorated, with a display featuring such notable sights as a tomb emblazoned with the name Koritzke (a tribute to Bob Koritzke, who operated the Spooky House Halloween haunt for decades) and a clever pun based on The Walking Dead – a warning about some not so dangerous “walkers.” The maze began inauspiciously with a path around the side of the house, but the back yard was filled with unbelievably ambitious settings, including a swamp with skeletal gators, a greenhouse with some sinister fauna, and a sewer tunnel haunted by the sewer-dwelling Mr. Sticky, who became the home haunt’s resident icon.
The home haunt switched from a walk-through to a yard display in 2019. With Covid-19 precluding close contact in tight spaces, Spooky Hollows did another front yard display in 2020, this time with an elaborate show using projections and lighting effects timed to a soundtrack explaining the origin of the haunt’s resident sewer dweller, Mr. Sticky. At the time, proprietor John Cassella suggested that some of those elements would be incorporated into future versions of the haunt; however, things took a turn in a new direction in 2021, with an upbeat display based on Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters 2 (1989).
Halloween 2022 saw another themed show, returning to the Mr. Sticky theme, this time titled The Cult of Mr. Sticky. The Ghostbusters theme returned in 2023.
Spooky Hollows Home Haunt Photo Gallery
