Mapping out Halloween Spirit: Festive Pacific Northwest Displays

0:00 Last year Gina's, um, Gina's theme was, "Scooby-Doo." She had all those "Scooby-Doo" characters, but she had them as skeletons, and then she had, she had a custom built mystery machine. There was a photo off. You could actually get it and take pictures. That is making her reappearance this year. That is so cool. [Music] Hello creepy people.

0:41 My name is Cassie, and this is PNW Haunts and Homicides, where me and my co-host Caitlyn usually chat about true crime, the paranormal, and all things creepy in the Pacific Northwest. She will not be joining me today, but I have a very fun bonus for you guys. We're going to be talking about Halloween display maps in the Pacific Northwest in Beyond. Hello, this is Jason. Hi, this is Diana. We are with PNWCL. What's PNW stand for? Pacific Northwest. Silly person. We have PNW in our name too, and everyone's like, "What does that mean?" [Laughter] Pacific Northwest.

1:22 So what is the CL stand for? Christmas lights. That's what we started with. Oh, okay. But now you're doing Halloween stuff. Is that correct? We do Christmas, Halloween, Easter. We've done St. Patrick's Day. We've done Veterans Day. Fourth of July. Fourth of July. Whatever people want to put up a display for, we'll do a map. We even did one year during COVID, a decorated porch parade for mardi gras. Oh my gosh, that is so fun. I missed that. Where was I? That one was mostly in Portland. I was dealing with the Portland mardi gras crew. Great folks.

2:04 We actually zoomed chat while I was driving off the McLeod heel fairy. That was fun. Oh my goodness. Remember that. That was interesting. So tell us a little bit more about this map, because I'm a very intrigued. Well, we've been mapping holiday displays now going on. This is our 11th year. Eight of those we've done Halloween. So far this year, we have 50 unique Halloween displays so far on a non-published map. Last year, we had close to three or 400 at the end of the season. Oh my goodness. That is a lot. Across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, British Columbia, and last year, we expanded included parts of Utah, Montana, other parts of Montana, Denver, Nevada, Northern California.

2:57 Yeah, it kind of blew up. Oh, this is so cool. Request of the display owners themselves, but why not? Yeah, I love that. So can anyone be on this map? If they decide to be on the map, they can be on the map. We prefer to take submissions from the owners themselves just for the sake of their approval and all that. Right. That makes sense. We have open to community submissions. When we get those, we're going to personally vet them before we actually publicly host them, just because we have had some issues in the past where display was on the map and they didn't want to be and it was causing them undo issues.

3:44 So you're very respectful of the display owners if they don't want to be on the map, they're not going to be on the map, but I do keep a record of them. I have a private map that I keep for my personal use. So what's the purpose of this map? What do people use it for? To just for family fun, getting out, you know, doing things during COVID, it was a great thing to get people out of the house without having to necessarily be in a crowd of people, things like that. But for years and years, I'd be at a display, you know, that my friends were on or anything like that. One of the biggest things they'd always ask is, "Hey, do you know of any other cool displays in the area?"

4:24 And they're really, after Steve Poole stopped doing the Parade of Lights on Como 4, for Christmas, there really wasn't a resource. We felt that we were going to be that community resource. It started with Washington and well, his kind of grown to be a uncontrollable beast. We love that uncontrollable beast. Yes, it should be barely controlled. Yeah, it's mostly been me and Diana running things. What we have had a, a couple of editors that have helped in the past, unfortunately, they have moved on and it's back to us doing three times the size of map that we had then with just the two of us.

5:08 Oh my gosh, do you guys need volunteers or anything like that? We always are looking for people that are willing to scout and report back. You know, if I've got displays that I have from last year that I don't have any information this year, yeah, we love, we love scouting, we love, you know, we love the community. I mean, we're not doing this for ourselves. We're doing this for the community. We're not out to make a buck by doing this. Yeah, right. Because you guys don't make anything, right? It's free. It's free. We don't charge anything for it though in the last few years, we have been taking some sponsorships from some local businesses. Love that. We love our costs because running a website and 40 to 60 hours of work for Christmas, on top of a 40 hour week job, the money's got to come somewhere.

5:57 I can't, and I'm not going to work 60 hours for free. You know, you know, if I can help it. Oh, yeah, we totally get that here. This is just our passion project. We are, well, we didn't start off getting paid to do it. Now we're kind of starting to get ads and things. So it is nice to be able to fund your work that you love. Yes, yes, and we're slowly trying to work our way into finding a way to make our community project into an actual 501C of some level. What is that again? I don't. Charity. Okay, okay. Like a nonprofit. So nonprofit.

6:37 Yeah. That is awesome. So we will include contact information if anyone listening is interested in volunteering, so they know how to get in touch with you. We can put that in our show notes for you. You'll also have like a submission form for people to submit their displays. We have a submission form on our website, pnwcl.com. And link is there for both Halloween and for Christmas. Awesome. And the map isn't live yet for Halloween, correct? Correct. The map will go live October 1st, even though I do have two or three displays that are already live. Oh my gosh. This is so exciting. I love spooky season.

7:18 I'm wearing my, I'm just, I'm just here for the boos. Sure. We're wearing branded. Yes. You got a rep, you know? Absolutely. Well, so have a little witch hat. Don't have my signs behind me with our QR code or anything? No, no. Oh, perfect. That'll make it easy if anyone's watching or Patreon. They can just scan the QR code behind you. What has your favorite display been? Every display has their own charm. It's like trying to say what is your favorite child? You know you have one, but you don't really want to say it. But for absolute insanity of display, just the display itself.

8:02 Historically. Davis graveyard in Portland. Yes, I have heard of that. That is awesome. That is very epic. It is, it is an absolute amazing, amazing display. Now for the fun changing theme every year, display, I'm going to throw one of my good friends and display owners under the bus Gina laws who runs the spectacular Halloween house down in Covington. Where is Covington? Near Kent. Is that Washington? It is Washington. Okay, Washington. Yeah, I'm from Oregon. So, Portland area. So, southern part of Seattle, but East.

8:45 Yeah, a lot of spooky stuff up there. Gina's been doing displays for both Halloween and Christmas going on 20 plus years. Oh, that is so cool. Do you guys do any displays? Minor decorations here and there, nothing major with everything else we got going on. We don't have time to manage a display. You're right. But last year Gina's, Gina's theme was Scooby-Doo. She had all those Scooby-Doo characters, but she had them as skeletons. And then she had a custom built mystery machine that was a photo op. You could actually get it and take pictures. That is making reappearances here. That is so cool.

9:27 A couple of years back she had a big devil statue on a throne and the theme was Shout of the Devil. Nice. I love this. I am so happy. I'm going to take a look at the map this year and maybe go on a little tour. And the best thing about the map other than a couple of displays, they are all family, friendly. Oh, well, okay. Maybe I won't just give it. We try to keep it all ages. Once I have the intentional jump scares and other things like that, I'm thinking of the small children that, in a parent's, they're looking at my map for a family resource. So, not that I don't have some more PG-13 or adult ones on their occasionally at request, but I marked them differently than the other ones just so people are aware.

10:17 Okay. Yeah, I was going to ask you have a mark, does like, scary not for children or? Yeah, I had a handful of those last year on my map. One of my favorites actually down in the Portland area, he's, I think he's an actual Milwaukee address. He does an animated light display and he does Halloween and a few others. It's chilling lights on Lark. He puts on a fun show. He's got the big, the big Skellies and other, other aspects there. He puts on a fun Halloween show, a little bit of a spook, a lot of fun. He just has a good old time with it.

10:57 Are most of these kind of interactive where you can kind of go through the display? Some are view from the street. There are a handful that are walk through. Then there's others that are actual light shows. Like you see on like, Great Christmas light fight. Were there any major to music? I love that. That is like one of my favorite, one of those, you know, the tick-tock videos of the light displays. That's mainly where I've seen them. I don't think I've actually seen one in real life. There is a ton in the Portland area. I'm going to have to go check, but I know last year I had a really cool house in the Portland area where you drive by the house of the day. Can't see anything at night.

11:38 He's got a projection map of all across this house. When I saw that, I was literally blown away. I mean, I've seen projection mapping before, but I've not seen it done on a residential house, and that was amazing. I would love to see that. Is that on the map this year? I haven't verified him yet for this year, but I'm pretty sure he will be running. Okay. I'll be looking for that one. That would be pretty reliable. Yeah. We have in the past partnered with a Halloween specific group called the Northwest Haunters. He's been doing Halloween about a year. He started his page about a year after I started he and WCL. He's specifically Halloween and all that.

12:25 There are differences in how we run things. He just maintains everything that's there and requires people to say, "Okay, if you change anything or update anything, let me know." Okay. Me, I vet everything every year. It more work, but it guarantees when somebody goes to a display that it's there. Yeah. You don't want someone showing up to like an empty yard and me like, "Well, what the heck?" In there, done that. They're ghosts. You can't see them. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, it's a lot of extra work to develop a meat year, but I find it just it provides a better experience. Yeah. That is a ton of work. So that's very understandable that you need volunteers and stuff. So, creepy people, listen up. If you need some extra volunteer work, you know where to go. And we'll take them from all of our map areas.

13:16 So, you obviously probably don't visit the ones that are out of state, but do you try to actually physically visit most of them? We try to visit as many as we can every year. For Halloween, we usually don't travel too far. We might do a trip to Portland. And then we'll stay locally around the Seattle area. Christmas on the other hand, we go crazy. Oh, I bet. Well, one year we literally drove from Seattle, scouted all of Vancouver, checked into our hotel, then drove to Albany. Oh my gosh. All in one day. And then back to the hotel in Portland. Wow. That is not a day trip. But yeah, around Christmas, we're known to go as far south as like Medford, as far north as Northern Vancouver, British Columbia, as far east as Cordelaine, Post Falls, Idaho. Yeah, we've covered two thirds of the mileage of our map at one point or another. Some years, we get to all three points last year because of the weather.

14:22 We couldn't do anything with Spokane or Eastern Oregon. But snow and ice and all that. I had three Christmas displays that literally could not set up because of the weather. Oh my gosh. Well, that sucks. Yeah, because when you started much earlier than typical, meant to a much higher severity that year. And one of them, it was there going to be their swan song year. It was going to be their final year. But they're like, yep, nope. Sorry. We can't do this. Oh, did they do it again the next year or no? No, this would be the next year. No, they. Oh, I see. They have sent sold off the display to other display owners, which that's one thing my community does is, you know, we, you know, we partner that we partner the display owners together as well, not just make a map. We have a group that has that's all of our display owners like 300 300 strong display owners across the Northwest. It's a community.

15:19 We built of them and they can network with each other, feed off each other, get ideas of each other, buy, sell, whatever they need to do. Oh, that is awesome. Do you have like a Facebook page where you connect everyone or. Yep. Yep. Yep. It is called Pacific Northwest display owners. It's a sub, it's a subgroup of the Pacific Northwest Christmas lights Facebook page. Do you ever have any crossover with like the Halloween and Christmas kind of like a nightmare before Christmas type five? Yes, I have multiple displays that have done nightmare before Christmas. And some have actually done nightmare before Christmas for Christmas. I love that. That is that's what I do for Christmas. My tree and all my decorations it's nightmare before Christmas stuff.

16:09 So it's like starts October goes through Christmas. It's the easiest decorating. I even had one one display one year. Do they're nightmare before Christmas for Easter for Easter? Oh, because they do have an Easter bunny in it. Yeah. So they they wouldn't put bunny ears on Jack and Sally and put some, you know, eggs and other things out. Yeah. They just they ran with it and made it hilarious. I can't remember either, but it was years ago now. I love that. That's my kind of people for sure, because I feel like nightmare before Christmas in the beginning it shows all of the holidays, you know, little doors on the trees. So I think that movie can be used for any holiday. Absolutely.

16:53 Is there requirements for how big the display has to be to get accepted? I don't set any set requirement on size. If I let's say someone submits on display and then I go to and see the display and it's one string of lights, I'm going to be like, yeah, no, sorry. And take you off the map. But no, if you if you put your if you put your heart and soul into it and you you feel it's worthy, I'm going to take your word at it and put it on the map. That's just what we do. Awesome. That kind of reminds me though of the Grinch decorations, where it's just a Grinch and then one strand of lights because he took all the decorations. Yeah. We've had a few of those. We've had we've had one of my favorites at least for Christmas, this house up in Canada, this is monstrous display every inch in other house, every inch of the yard and all their bushes was all covered in lights and they've even slotted over into the neighbor's yards a little bit. But they've got all there. But then across the street, just this one little light up hippo, a little sign saying, I'm lost. Oh, that is so cute. Yeah. Across from the mega display and then just, it's a little hippo. I'm lost. Were they on the map too? Oh, yeah. That was there. They're on the Christmas map. They're called Rudolph and Friends. They're they're on amazing display. Older couple have been doing it for 30, 40 years now. They amazing people.

18:24 Oh, I love that. Well, on our show, we usually do kind of a tarot reading or I have an Oracle deck. Are you guys interested in me pulling a card for you at all? I don't know how you feel about tarot. Yeah. I do have an Oracle deck. It's not it's totally different from tarot. It's just the cards all have their own meanings and they're all generally positive. So there's nothing like there's not like one of those death cards in there. But it's really pretty. It's Halloween themed. Kind of witchy and cute. I thought it would be perfect. So I'll show you. It's called a moon Oracle deck. That is definitely pretty from the visual. Have you guys ever played with any of these Oracle cards or not in the slightest? Okay. So we're going to pull a card for the Halloween display map. Diana and Jason? Yes. Okay. Let's see what we got here.

19:30 Ooh, we got the enchanted card. Me look. It's kind of interesting because this is kind of like one of the least Halloween-y type of cards on there. It's like a little fairy lady with a cat. Well, let's see what the definition says. Okay. Enchanted. Charmed mystery belief. It is your choice to live an enchanted existence. Open the doors to mystery and magic in your life. Discover all that is in store and waiting just for you like maybe a Halloween decoration. A life that is mysterious, playful and filled with hidden treasure is waiting for you to unearth it. That's so cool because you're talking about kind of like a map and it's talking about treasure, like a treasure map.

20:21 Keep your mind open to all that is possible. Your world will be filled with many surprises, like jump scares. Sometimes it is helpful to reminisce and look back on your childhood years. Re-kendle your carefree natural feelings. Children seek out the extraordinary with inquisitive imaginations. They believe in magic, fairies, unicorns and being able to fly just using their arms as wings. They are not frightened and they know these are good spirits who bring joy. And then the intention says seek out the mystical and magical feelings and life of enchantment.

21:02 That was so perfect. Like the childhood feelings and stuff that is all about like Christmas lights and you were even talking about that. Child-friendly and always keep a family friendly but you know there's those displays that have a lot of blood and gourd and we have them too but it's not our focus. Yeah, but definitely when you go see something like that you're going to have this at least I do anyway because I love Halloween and decorations and stuff but you get like this child like gettiness and excitement. Absolutely. We feed on the feeling that we get from people when we're at displays. So we're out visiting display and we feel people getting excited over the display and all that. And then if we hear that actually used our map to get there that just feeds our soul.

21:57 I mean it doesn't get the better feeling than that. Do people take pictures and post them of all the displays or do you guys do pictures of them? Yes and yes. One of our other subgroups is we have the PNW CL fan group which is a community group where anybody can post up pictures or other things in there. It's all moderated so anything that comes in we have to physically approve just because spam happens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People have people try to post to the main page all that gets denied flat out because I don't it's a page not a group not a public group. That makes sense. But yes and we do post up hundreds if not thousands of pictures every year of displays we visited and all the galleries are still there from last year. So you know there's plenty to see. Do you keep those up or do you delete them as a whole? After a couple of years I usually will archive them. I'll use you move them to an archive folder. Otherwise I do maintain copies of them digitally in my inventory but not always on the Facebook they're going back too far. But I usually keep two or three years with the photos up there. Okay. Awesome. So you can kind of look back on past years and maybe get ideas and inspiration of what to do maybe what not to do if it's already been done that's kind of cool. And you know there's

23:30 there's nothing around with doing the same thing someone else has done. I mean last two years ago I had three nightmare before Christmas displays. They were almost identical within 10 miles each other. Oh wow. But I mean you can never get too much nightmare before Christmas. Yeah. Well it's a call they all went to Walmart and got the same things. So is there anything else that you guys want to put out there that you want people to know? Well here we can be found on the web on Facebook Twitter/x whatever you want to call it these days we're on there not as active. Yeah. And um through Instagram and also threads.

24:14 Threads. What is threads? Threads is Facebook's version of Twitter. Okay. I'll make it easy for you. Just go to our website pnwcl.com and in the corner I have links to the Facebook, the Instagram and the Twitter all right there. All the things. All the things. Awesome. What is so nice chatting with you? Oh when does the map go live? October 1st. Okay. I feel like we talked about it but just saw it just saw me make sure. Well that was mentioned at the end of the show too. Yeah. So October 1st map goes live everyone check it out if you are interested in being featured on the map you can submit your display. And if you want to just help out and scout just then this email which is also linked on the website with any displays you might find preferably as much information as possible.

25:12 Have a creepy day. Yeah. And as we always like to say on our page happy haunting. Yes happy haunting. [Music] [Music] I feel like a another question for you. Was it? This is why we edit.

25:59 There's also a dog whining next to me. Hey Molly you need to be quiet. Shh. Her mom left my co-host left me alone. How do she? I don't. Oh okay I remember.