Every night, starting in mid-September, Diego Linares puts on a serial killer costume and stands in his front yard for three hours.
asserted
Linares → start → hours
The 40-year-old alternates outfits: some nights he’s Michael Myers, the masked murderer from the Halloween films.
asserted
he → ’ → films
Other nights he’s Jason Voorhees, from the Friday the 13th franchise.
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he → ’ → franchise
His family’s modest suburban yard in Burbank, California, has been transformed into a slasher movie set.
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yard → transform → set
Fake mist leaks out of the door of a cabin labeled “Crystal Lake”.
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mist → leak → cabin
Jack-o-lanterns, monsters, corpses and illuminated gravestones jostle for space across the ground.
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lanterns → illuminate → ground
From the roof above the front door, a giant skeleton blinks its digital eyes.
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skeleton → blink → eyes
“All this started because I wanted more trick-or-treaters,” said Linares, who describes himself as an introvert.
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who → start → introvert
Burbank, a placid city of 100,000 in Los Angeles county, has become known as the “Halloween capital” of America.
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Burbank → know → America
Here, the holiday isn’t just one night, or even a week, but a spooky, ecstatic, intensely competitive celebration that can last a month or longer.
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that → last → ?
Linares is just one of dozens of enthusiastic locals who have turned their homes into DIY haunted houses – transforming Burbank into a destination for Halloween tourism.
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who → turn → tourism
Residents here spend months – and sometimes thousands of dollars – turning their front yards into miniature Disney-style attractions, complete with elaborate sets, music, lights, animatronic figures, and sometimes even costumed human actors.
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Residents → spend → sets
Some houses accept donations to support their decorations, but none of them charge a fee.
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none → accept → fee
Linares, who puts on his front-yard haunted spectacle non-stop for 42 nights, starting on 19 September and running through Halloween, is particularly hardcore.
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who → put → Halloween
On Tuesday, Linares, standing 6ft 6in, and wearing Jason’s characteristic hockey mask, repeatedly emerged from the cabin door holding a bloody axe, which he used to menace visitors standing close to the front fence.
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he → stand → fence
He worked the crowd easily – swinging the axe with a gentle swoosh, complimenting family costumes, coaxing high fives from wide-eyed toddlers, even taking off his mask to reassure a tiny girl: “It’s fake – it’s pretend!”
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it → work → girl
On this relatively slow work night before Halloween, the house still attracted about 500 visitors.
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house → attract → visitors
The whole experience – photographs, hand-designed stickers, a short walk through a haunted tunnel, hours of crowd-control work from Linares’ sisters – was free.
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experience → design → sisters
“We didn’t have a car growing up.
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We → have → car
I never got to go to Disneyland or Universal Studios.
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I → get → Disneyland
I never got a picture with Santa Claus.
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I → get → Claus
I know what it’s like,” Linares said.
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Linares → know → what
“This is my making the world a better place.”
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world → make → ?
It’s no surprise that all of Los Angeles – a city of underemployed actors, stylists and special effects experts – goes hard for Halloween.
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all → ’ → Halloween
Griffith Park, Los Angeles’s wilder, craggier version of Central Park, hosts a collection of haunted houses so massive that their fake mist regularly drifts out on to Interstate 5, impeding visibility on the highway.
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mist → host → highway
But Burbank operates on an even higher Halloween level – displaying the kind of skill and ambition that emerges when the neighbor coming to look at your decor is a Disney Imagineer.
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neighbor → operate → decor
“We get people from everywhere.
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We → get → people
We get international tourists,” said Burbank resident Al Ritch, whose front-yard decor features two skeletons pointing the way to more famous Halloween houses on neighboring blocks: “Pirates” one way, “Pumpkins” another.
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Pirates → get → blocks
Both of these houses – “Pirates of Burbank” and “The Pumpkin Cemetery” – have their own social media accounts with a few thousand followers, and fans who return to visit them year after year.
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who → have → year
The subculture of Halloween fans who make their own “home haunts” is a phenomenon across the US, with enthusiastic “haunters” gathering for annual conventions on the east and west coasts, in the midwest, and in Texas.
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haunters → make → Texas
But the Los Angeles region “really is unlike anywhere else in the world”, and the city of Burbank “is probably the epicenter”, said Derek Young, the founder of SoCal Haunt List, a website that maps more than 200 elaborately decorated homes from Bakersfield to San Diego.
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that → say → Diego
“This goes so far beyond just putting up lights and maybe carving some pumpkins and putting out candy,” Young said.
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Young → go → candy
“These are people who dedicate multiple months of their lives every year to creating these experiences for people to come and see, and a lot of them rival the big theme parks.”
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lot → dedicate → parks
Burbank’s mayor, Tamala Takahashi, said that the creativity and skill of local homeowners should come as no surprise.
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creativity → say → surprise
The 100,000-person Los Angeles suburb is the longtime home of many major Hollywood studios, including Disney and Warner Bros. While other towns might have more on-screen Hollywood talent, “most of Burbank is back of house”, Takahashi said.
uncertain
Takahashi → include → house
“We’re the set designers, the costumers, the production managers, the post-production, the special effects.”
asserted
We → ’re → ?
Many of Burbank’s elaborate Halloween houses are “a celebration of movies and cinema”, Takahashi said – homages to shows such as Stranger Things or to the visionary horror director Tim Burton, who graduated from Burbank high school in 1976.
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who → say → 1976
She said that the city’s taste for Halloween mania has blossomed over the past decade or so.
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taste → say → decade
“It’s gotten more and more elaborate and exciting.
asserted
It → get → ?
I think we’re at our peak right now,” Takahashi said.
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Takahashi → think → peak
…and 71 more, not listed.
The Aporia
