San Fernando Valley Yard Haunts 2020: Gothic Hills, Community Creep, Fillmore Graves, and Freak Show
San Fernando Valley, CA
After a few runs with haunted shows, we’re back to haunted yard displays for the next few updates. This round, we’re swinging through the outer rims of the San Fernando Valley to check out three displays that bring very different ambiances plus one that I saw last year that I *think* is still operating this year. Shall we get spoopin’? Lets get spoopin’.
Gothic Hills Cemetery
This was my last unique haunt of last year—the (approximately) 75th of what ended up being a hugely busy season. A terrifically done, well choreographed maze and haunted tour walkthrough plenty of integrated cinematic effects, Gothic Hills Cemetery was also one of the best pleasant surprises of the 2019 season. This year, the walk-through has been omitted for obvious COVID concerns, but the gorgeous cemetery yard display remains, and it’s just as beautiful as it was last year!
A series of beautifully lit, finely detailed tombstones lines the front lawn and the stepped line of planters adjacent to the sidewalk. A gnarled wrought iron gate marks the boundary of the graveyard, with a towering ghoulish reaper type figure looming just beyond, right in front of the front door of the residence. The display is eerily lit in shades of blues, green, purples, and magentas, adding a supernatural saturation to the tone of the scene. It all adds up to a more colorful version of another recurring favorite (that isn’t open this year), VanOaks Cemetery.
Gothic Hills Cemetery may not be offering tours this year, but peering through the fences to their display still offers a stunning sight!
Gothic Hills is also one of the more active yard haunts in terms of social messages. Plenty of reminders to socially distance and wear a mask and even encouragement to go out and vote can be seen across the display. There’s no open partisanship here, though. People are just encouraged to do their civic duty in general. And the Coronavirus safety measures apply to everyone, since the virus doesn’t care what the background or beliefs of the person it infects.
Despite the lack of a walk-through, Gothic Hills continues to conduct a canned food drive this season. Anyone who stops by the property to check things out is encouraged to bring a can of non-perishable food, to be donated to a local food bank. This year, they’re looking to equal or exceed the 600 lbs of canned foods that they collected last year. It’s a wonderful way to give back to the community in addition to putting on the display to entertain neighbors.
Gothic Hills also includes messages related to social engagement, such as this pole / poll dancers encouraging everyone to get out and vote!
Gothic Hills Cemetery is located at 13796 Marchant Ave, Sylmar, CA 91342 and runs nightly through Halloween night from 6:00 - 10:00pm. It’s definitely one of the lovelier displays out there, and if you’re in the area this Saturday, October 31st, swing by nearby Haunted Groundz for their super charming and fun haunted show—running one night only!
Community Creep at Sinman Manor
I started off last Friday with a visit to a new haunt for me: the Community Creep at Sinman Manor.
This yard display may initially just look like a mish-mash of different store bought Halloween decorations residing in a specially constructed porch on the side of the road, but give a loud clap of the hands, and chaos breaks loose. Pumpkin lawn light flicker, a figure removes it's head, a scarecrow jumps forth, a skeleton starts skittering, a hag starts rocking, and the result is a creepy cacophony of crying creatures. And it's actually kind of awesome. For a haunt made up of a majority store-bought props, characters, and effects, the combination of everything together and the unexpected cacophony is in and of itself pretty creative. It’s a maelstrom of Halloween sounds and groans and shrieks, and it tinges the children in all of us who would be giddily amused at such an uprising of Halloween symphonies.
The Community Creep might just look like an assembly of various Halloween props and figures that one can buy at any store, the secret comes when guests just clap.
Steve, the owner of Community Creep, built the entire porch structure himself, and this is his first-ever endeavor at a more elaborate haunted display. He felt that with Halloween in danger of being suppressed this year due to the pandemic safety measures, he needed to offer some contribution to the spooky scene. As the folks at Midsummer Scream would say, he’s definitely doing his part to save Halloween!
All the sound-triggered effects go off at once, creating a surprising but also kind of silly environment of lighting and audio effects.
Community Creep at Sinman Manor is located at 17643 Community St, Northridge, CA 91325 and runs nightly through Halloween from 6:00 - 10:00pm and till 11:00pm on weekends.
Fillmore Graves
Moving down toward the Sherman Oaks and Van Nuys border, we find Fillmore Graves, a delightfully charming, family-friendly Halloween display that combines a very slightly spooky pumpkin patch with a touch of Disney magic. …Literally, because the creator of Fillmore Graves is Walt Disney Imagineer Scott Goddard (know for, among other attractions, his work on the iconic Phantom Manor). And this whimsical display (which apparently has been running for the better part of the last decade; I’ve just been very late to the train) gives off a pretty strong amount of theme park vibes within the humble front yard.
Fillmore Graves is half farm scene, completely with a new tractor piece this year.
A towering scarecrow dominates the scene in the center of the yard, watching over a host of jack-o-lanterns scattered across the patch. On the left, an equally tall wind vane is bathed in green light, and next to that, an old tractor that bears a striking resemblance to the zombie car that’s impaled by a tree over in Disney California Adventure’s Radiator Springs Curios. Its grill is broken and bent into a grimacing expression, and every now and then, it sputters to life for a brief moment, as though gasping for one last ignition.
On the right half, a raven perches on a tree, eyes glowing red. A little beyond is a ramshackle shed that seems unable to decide in which direction it wants to fall down. The diagonal posts and beams and the rustic looking porch, bathed in blue, look like a combination of the banjo player’s shack in the bayou of Pirates of the Caribbean mixed with the exaggeratedly leaning control building of Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree. I guess the Cars Land similarities aren’t just one-offs.
To the back a spooky tree stands next to a still, with projected smoke casting off a scrim. Some lanterns and a pumpkin perched on a stump complete the effect. It’s part farm, part woods, part marsh, and all magical when the different components come to life at the sense of motion or at pre-programmed durations to add a sense of dynamicism to the scene.
A grave or two stands on the right side, along with a dilapidated shack positioned perfect behind the real front yard tree to blend into a spooky ambiance.
Fillmore Graves is located at 14318 Emelita St, Van Nuys, CA 91401 and presumably runs nightly through Halloween. It’s not on any lists, and I don’t think Scott is on social media (or at least there isn’t a social media created for this haunt), so there' are no officially running times. I’d go with the default 7:00 - 10:00pm to be safe. But do definitely stop by! This is a positively enchanting display, and especially for visitors with children, it will bring a smile and some amazement to their faces.
Freak Show
Last but not least, we have a yard display that I found last year after visiting VanOaks Cemetery, which I believe is also running this year. Called Freak Show, this psychotic circus spread wide across the entire front lawn of its corner lot, positioning disturbing clowns, menacing spooks, a fun skeleton organist, and other foreboding figures around vibrant purples and magenta hues. The most dominating feature of this display is actually the massive (oak?) tree that spreads out over almost the entire yard. Assorted gravestones are littered around its trucks on the round, as is a bed of string lights producing a effect that almost seems to light the ground on fire.
Just beyond, a few clowns survey the scene, and a trio of ominous characters, dressed in white, with blank, lifeless stares, sit quietly in the midst of a high contrast, flashing strobe light. They almost feel like The Tethered from Us, sitting there, biding, just waiting.
Freak Show features a pretty elaborate set-up.
The front porch of the residence features the most dense portion of the decorations, with a variety of fiends sitting around what almost looks like a psychic’s parlor, taking in the practically ultraviolent illumination. Around the corner, a few more traditional Halloween costume characters complete the scene. Altogether, though this isn’t on any specific haunted attraction list than I know of, it was still certainly more than sufficiently detailed to warrant a stop. So like i’ve said before, for every entry on something like a SoCal Haunt List, there are plenty more off the internet radar, and some of them are pretty stellar!
The front of the house in particular is brimming with details!
Freak Show is located at 5758 Burnet Ave, Van Nuys, CA 91411, on the corner of Burnet and Hatteras St. If it’s not actually running this year, please tell me, but last year, it ran past 10:00pm when I visited, at least during the weekend. Swing by and take in the spectacle!
That wraps up this quartet of haunts—four of so many fantastic creations all across Southern California. We’ve got a lot more, including additional stops in Orange County and a whole host of yard displays in the Burbank, North Hollywood, and Toluca Lake area. This part of Southern California is probably the densest hotbed of home haunt activity—even more than the Santa Clarita Valley, so we’ll be exploring a bit if that coming up!
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
