Trick-or-treating is for kids, but a handful of local grown-ups are deadly serious about celebrating the Halloween activity with style.

Families in the College area, University Heights and San Marcos spend all year, and much of their disposable income, assembling free trick-or-treat attractions that will last just a few golden hours on Halloween night. Here’s a look at these long-running neighborhood haunts and the passionate scare-meisters behind them.

The Great Pumpkin’s Halloweentown

On Halloween 1964, teen brothers Jim and Tom Papageorge stuck a loudspeaker in a 99-cent plastic pumpkin and the tradition of The Great Pumpkin was born.


Fifty-one years later, the spook-loving siblings are still at it with a College-area backyard haunt that has grown to include a multi-scene walk-through show with 25 actors, a 15-member technical crew, a 197-pound real pumpkin and $40,000 worth of sound and light equipment. For those 1,000 or so young trick-or-treaters brave enough to complete the journey each year, the Papageorges set aside 75 pounds of candy.

Jim Papageorge along with some of his volunteers, left-to-right, Ben Keller, Ben Wilson and Hunter Forcier (kneeling) work on the opening exhibit the guillotine for his 51st annual Great Pumpkin haunted attraction at his home in the College Area. (Nelvin C. Cepeda)

“I got an anonymous thank-you card in the mail about 25 years ago addressed to the Great Pumpkin saying ‘thanks for all the joy you bring.’ We have the privilege of bringing joy to children for free. We consider it a gift we’re lucky to receive,” said Jim Papageorge.

For the first 10 years of the event, the Great Pumpkin was just a talking pumpkin. But in the mid-1970s, when the brothers were playing in rock bands with increasingly sophisticated sound equipment, they decided to go high-tech. Jim eventually became a recording engineer and college professor (he now teaches audio arts at Grossmont College) and his students and fellow sound professionals jumped in to lend their time, talents and technical gear.


HALLOWEEN IN SAN DIEGO 2015

Tom went to Harvard Law School and became a special prosecutor for the San Diego District Attorney’s office, but he returns to the family home each Oct. 31 as Halloweentown’s tuxedo-clad guide. Each year, he leads groups of 25 on a circular, 15-minute journey around the exterior of the house, with stops at a full-size guillotine where a talking pumpkin greets the crowd, a large graveyard planted with live actors, a pirate tableau with a Jack Sparrow impersonator, a 20-foot black light tunnel and the grand finale, an interactive encounter with the 364-year-old Great Pumpkin and his miniature pumpkin nephew, Bob.

Jim Papageorge, left, works with friends on a pumpkin strawman for his 51st annual Great Pumpkin haunted attraction at his home in the College Area. (Nelvin C. Cepeda)

From behind one-way glass in the kitchen, Jim is the voice of the Great Pumpkin, who glows, chats with Bob, shoots fireballs from his head and sets off mini-earthquakes (courtesy of an 18-inch subwoofer speaker hidden below). Although kids under 5 are encouraged to skip the graveyard scene, Jim said Halloweentown is designed with families in mind.

“We advertise ourselves as being as scary as Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland ... no more, no less,” Jim said. “Instead of terror and dark, we go for spooky and funny.”


Jim said it’s hard to calculate the cost of Halloweentown because he’s been accumulating items year-round for decades, but he estimates the pirate booty of silver and jewels alone is worth more than $20,000. But before any sticky-fingered tricksters get any ideas, he warns that his brother will be there with his volunteer pals in law enforcement. “We’ll have one D.A., two policemen and a federal marshal, so we don’t usually have any security problems.”

The Great Pumpkin’s Halloweentown runs from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday in a neighborhood off Montezuma Road near San Diego State University. For a map and driving directions, visit gr8pumpkin.com.

Trick or Treat on Maryland Street

Every summer in University Heights, a clock goes up on Maryland Street that counts down the days until Halloween.


That’s when Andy and Paula Cameron — better known as Mr. and Mrs. Halloween — will transform a three-block stretch of their neighborhood into trick-or-treaters paradise.

This year, the Camerons will deck out 17 homes on Maryland Street with elaborate Halloween decor that includes a smoke-snorting 17-foot animatronic dragon, the Bates Motel, Frankenstein’s lab, a graveyard, a funeral parlor, Jack Skellington’s Halloweentown, a Wizard of Oz tableau, a 14-foot walkaround grim reaper and a singing skelelton (Frank Skinnotra) with a harmonizing pumpkin choir. Last year’s attraction drew 4,400 trick-or-treaters.

Andy and Paula Cameron in the graveyard of their haunted neighborhood in University Heights. (Hayne Palmour IV)

The Camerons make a deal with neighbors who agree to participate. The couple provides all the decor and set-up, but the residents must agree to store the props the rest of the year and pay for the electricity to run the lights and sound on Halloween night. The neighbors are also encouraged to dress in costume and sit on their porches with candy to welcome visitors.


“What I love about Halloween is it’s the one holiday that gets you out of your house to meet your neighbors and create a sense of community,” said Andy, a self-employed scenery, lighting and animatronic designer who has been passionate about Halloween since his early childhood in L.A.

He found a kindred spirit in Paula, an accountant-turned-artist who he married in October 1996. She got hooked on Halloween at age 5 when her father was out town and her mom was sick in bed. Rather than cancel the holiday festivities, the kindergartener pulled a chair up to the door and handed out all the loot by herself.

The couple’s first haunt was an animated Phantom of the Opera door prop they set up two weeks after their wedding. When they bought their home on Maryland Street in 1997, they began enlisting their neighbors in the fun.

As the former lighting and sound manager for San Diego Repertory Theatre, Andy has dozens of friends in the design community who have donated so many props, decor, lights, sound and technical equipment over the years, that the annual event costs the couple virtually nothing. Andy, 48, works year-round designing technical elements for the display (like a raven he fashioned from an old Furby) and Paula, 46, paints all the props and signs. They devote the entire month of October to setup.


The street’s centerpiece is Norbert, a white-skinned dragon Andy fashioned from a rubber Halloween mask and pieces of wood, bicycle cable, steel fencing and a smoke machine he had in his garage. It takes a crew of six to operate Norbert, with Paula out front as the creature’s official “greeter.”

On Halloween night, Andy runs around the neighborhood with a walkie-talkie, repairing knocked-over props, replacing broken bulbs and fixing malfunctioning electronics. But when he has time to catch a breath, he loves watching small children interact with Norbert.

“There’s a moment every now and then when you catch a kid looking at Norbert and there’s this magic that happens where they’re brave and they’re curious and they take him very seriously,” he said. “He’s like Santa Claus and to these kids. Norbert’s as real as they come.”

Trick or Treat on Maryland Street takes place from 3:30 p.m. to midnight on Maryland Street between Meade and Lincoln avenues, San Diego.


The Witches Lair

For 364 days of the year, Casey Rummerfield works as a maintenance technician, but on Saturday he’ll slip into his favorite job: Halloween Phantasmechanic.

Casey Rummerfield, second from left, with his wife, Lori, and daughters Wendy and Carly at their annual haunt, which the Rummerfields have hosted at their San Marcos home for 23 years. ( / U_T File)

For 23 years, Rummerfield has hosted an elaborate haunted attraction that draws 350-400 trick-or-treaters every Halloween to his San Marcos home. This year’s haunt will have a witch theme, and visitors to his corner lot will find flying witches, a giant shaking barrel, springing spiders, a graveyard, a smoke-belching cannon, talking skulls, a pneumatically controlled zombie, pop-up skeletons, a jar of eyeballs and a life-size monster straining to escape his crypt. Spread along one wall of his garage is Spooky Town, an illuminated miniature Halloween village with a tiny mummy and werewolf seesawing on a teeter-totter, little skeleton cheerleaders waving pom-poms and twin pirate ships swaying in the mini-town’s port.


Halloween has been Rummerfield’s passion since third grade, when he and his lifelong best friend, Gray Jordan, started trick-or-treating together. As roommates, they hosted costume parties, and since 1993 they’ve collaborated each year on Rummerfield’s ever-growing home haunt.

Rummerfield, 54, said he begins setting up in August and doesn’t end until the first costumed children arrive at dusk on Halloween. Many of the more than $20,000 in props and decor are operated by remote control or with digitally synced sound, light and projection cues. His horror-night helpers include his wife, Lori, and their daughters Wendy, 21, and Carly, 15.

The best part of Halloween for Rummerfield is spending the evening with his family and his best friend and seeing how children react to the scares he has in store.

“I do it for the kids and how much they enjoy it, and how their parents tell me they come back every year,” he said. “Doing this is hard but when I hear their delight, it’s worth it every time.”


Witches Lair will run from dusk to 10 p.m. Saturday at 1416 Shadow Hills Drive, San Marcos.