Walking down a hallway in his home-cum-house of horrors, Dominic Menaldi spies some decorative cats’ eyes his decorator has strung up.

“I don’t want no kiddy (stuff,)” he shouts. “Let’s put a dead body here.”

On Halloween night, Menaldi expects upward of 5,000 people to troop through his Huntington Beach house, known locally as the “castle house.” He and his volunteers also plan to hand out 500 to 600 pounds of candy.

That’s when they’re not scaring the bejesus out of those who don’t take the “scaredy cat” route through the side yard.

In recent years, Menaldi’s house has been a must-see for those in search of a truly harrowing Halloween experience. It has become so popular that the wait time for the free event can sometimes stretch for hours.

Menaldi’s house will shake from the vibrations of 50 speakers pounding music, while strobe lights, black lights and smoke add a kind of visual dystopia. Rooms are crowded with apparitions, body parts and mannequins. Or are they? You might not know until one jumps out and grabs you.

The master of the mayhem is Menaldi, a security company supervisor, construction worker and carpenter, bodyguard, power-lifter and former occasional bear wrestler. The 300-pound gleeful boogeyman hopes to give you bad dreams for weeks. But all in good fun.

Menaldi has also made the news several times over the years for battling with the city over the color and several lions heads and shields that adorned a wall on his property along Magnolia Avenue, or the time the house was invaded by rats from the ASCON landfill site across the street.

And then there were the bear wrestling matches, the last of which was in 1999, when Menaldi fought a grizzly named Dakota who was reportedly more interested in cookies and Sarah Brightman songs than engaging with Menaldi.

Halloween, however, is a more recent interest. Until he began transforming a typical southeast Huntington Beach tract home into a one-of-a-kind castle, Menaldi had never really been into the whole Halloween thing.

In 2002, he bought the house on the corner of Bermuda Drive and Magnolia. Menaldi said he was working security at a rock company at the time and was allowed to take home whatever he wanted. That was when the castle idea came.

“I didn’t like stucco, so I started putting castle rock up,” he said.

Next came the gargoyles and the griffin, and then Halloweeners drawn by the growing spookiness of the house. After the house was finished, the whole idea of decorating inside and out and having visitors pass through gradually evolved, Menaldi said.

Now it’s all the rage.

Menaldi spends the better part of a month setting up the house with the help of volunteer friends, including Lori Primo, a professional decorator who has added her touches the past couple of years.

Revelers climb through three stories of the house. Each room has a theme. There is an exorcist room, a spider room, a don’t-lose-your-head-at-the-bar room, the evil bride room, the meat locker and green goblin room.

Maybe best of all, particularly for Menaldi, who loves to buck up against convention and social correctness, is a scary clown room, where the candy is.

Menaldi said his gallery of ghouls grows every year, much of it given to him by others.

“I give myself $500 each year and I go out and buy after Halloween and at garage sales,” he said. “I have never bought a Halloween prop at the regular price.”

The festivities usually begin around 6 p.m. Often the candy doesn’t last the night, but the weirdness can.

There was the time a guy came in saying he had just been assaulted – apparently by the animatronic Jason Voorhees at the front door.

“Sometimes we find people wandering around at 1 a.m.,” Menaldi said.

Such is life at the castle house.

Contact the writer: gmellen@scng.com