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TORONTO • When Chris Ainsworth wants to make a good impression on his neighbours, he takes them into his morgue.

Within the dimly lit chamber, a slime-covered resin skeleton lies prone on a metal examining table, bookended by wall units filled with severed body parts: rubber feet and grimacing, gore-splattered heads.

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The “morgue” is the nucleus of a five-room, 420-square foot haunted house in suburban Toronto Mr. Ainsworth erects in his driveway each year at Halloween, attracting visitors from all over the city. Filled with life-sized wraithlike spectres, the structure also features a “haunted hallway” with horrifying pictures, giant witches chanting incantations and a room where the demons have apparently captured live children inside a cage of twigs — local kids who have volunteered to wail and cry on cue over the course of several evenings in late October.

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“Some guys like to spend their money hunting or fishing, or on their hot-rods,” says Mr. Ainsworth, one of the more sophisticated players among the hundreds of “home haunters” across Canada who will help push this country’s Halloween economy to as much as $1-billion this year, according to the Retail Council of Canada. Mr. Ainsworth, 49, estimates he has spent more than $10,000 in the past decade on his passion for frightful things. “When I got older and wasn’t able to trick or treat anymore, the next best thing was to scare people. First, I put out a few pumpkins and tombstones. Then it just kept growing and growing.”