Orange County Yard Haunts 2020: Bayou By You, Haunted Mansion Haunt, Gershon Dungeon, and Phantom Hollow

Orange County, CA

It’s Halloween Eve, and we’ve got—yup, you guess it—more home haunts! This year will be an unusual and different year, even on Halloween night, when many may opt to forgo trick-or-treating in order to mitigate risks and contact with strangers. But people can still drive by some fantastic yard displays, and we’ve got another collection in Orange County, including what I personally feel is one of the most elaborate and beautiful ones of the season, set on a street with multiple other displays as well!

We’ll get to that one, though. And other spooks that we visited last Saturday. Are you ready for another haunting spree?

The Bayou By You

The Bayou By You might win the title of cutest name for a home haunt. This intimate front yard Halloween display in Ladera Ranch squeezes a few pirate scenes into its tight South OC lot, with spooky marshlands, a hanging skeleton, a boiling cauldron, some hanging lanterns, and even a "burning" second floor window into its setup. It’s a fair amount of content in a small amount of outdoor space, typical for homes in this part of Orange County.

This cozy Ladera Ranch home is home to a neat little Pirates of the Caribbean-inspired display.

Pirates of the Caribbean seems to have inspired numerous home haunts we've seen this fall. Add this adorable one to the list, especially in South O.C., which doesn’t have a particularly dense collection of special Halloween display. We’re glad this family is doing its part to show its spooky passion!

You can’t have a pirate haunt without swashbuckling skeletons!

The Bayou By You is located at 156 Sellas Rd S, Ladera Ranch, CA 92694 and runs tonight for one more night for the season, from 7:00 - 10:00pm. It was operational for most of this month, making it one of the displays that could have been visited at the beginning of October!

Haunted Mansion Haunt

The Haunted Mansion Haunt has been residence to a wonderfully charming walk-through and yard display for many years, returned from a few years dark a couple of years ago and again last year. I never got to visit this tribute to the Haunted Mansion when I was busy scaring at Higgins Manor, so I appreciate that it’s come back since.

This year, due to a COVID-19, the Mansion is a yard display only. As a result, the props have been rearranged into a layout that sort of envelopes guests as they view from the driveway. The most impressive part of this haunt is all the figures that creator Salar Kohnechi has personally hand crafted. These happy haunts are life-size and resemble their Mansion inspirations startlingly well, and there's even an awesome Hatbox Ghost in the frame.

Every few minutes, the lights will also dim, and a Grim Grinning light show emerges, complete with singing busts projected onto a trio of heads. Although the whole production is scaled back from previous years, it's still a wonderful tribute to everyone's favorite Disneyland abode. Salar even spent this past year reprogramming the show elements to bring a crisper and more updated presentation. With actual Disneyland still closed, this might be the closest one gets to experiencing a ride with 999 Happy Haunts!

But favorite characters from the past years are still there, spooking the night away!

Haunted Mansion Haunt is located at 28322 Millwood Rd, Trabuco Canyon, CA 92679 and runs one more night, tonight, from 6:00 - 9:30pm. The past couple of years, it has run the week and a half or so up to Halloween.

The Gershon Dungeon

The Gershon Dungeon is one of the elder statesmen of Southern California home haunts, along with such recognizable names like Rotten Apple 907, Beware the Dark Realm, Boot Hill, and Restless Souls Manor. Although it’s been around for 27 years, I only visited it for the first time last year. What I found was a solid, terrifying, old school haunt with a surprisingly extensive length, great scareactors, and a very intimate brand of fear-delivery.

How many homes—or haunts—have a moving dragon guarding its entrance?

This year, due to COVID, the Gershon Dungeon is a Halloween display instead, and they've basically taken the greatest scenic hits of the maze and laid them out along the street--and added one of those nifty Home Depot 12 ft tall skeletons to boot! The iconic castle gates with roaring animatronic dragon guards the entrance. Next to that, a gated area is flanked by gargoyles. The bayou area of last year's maze comes next, and then a mine shaft that formed last year's exit. From time to time, lighting crashes upon the scene, adding extra illumination to an otherwise dramatically and moodily lit display.

If you couldn't visit in 2019, this basically gives you the Cliffs Notes version! The Gershon Dungeon is a throwback to the era of old school Knott’s Halloween Haunt-style productions, and it’s a cherished example of home haunt history!

Last year’s scenic bayou scene is back and placed along the street, with a rocking skeleton enjoying its quiet and solitude.

The Gershon Dungeon is located at 13861 Gershon Pl, Santa Ana, CA 92705 and is always open the Saturday evening before Halloween and on Halloween night.

Phantom Hollow

Finally, our feature presentation of today’s update, the majestic, magnificent, magical, most astounding Phantom Hollow. I visited this in the middle of my night and left in awe. I thought places like Burbank and the San Fernando / Santa Clarita Valleys (with their large population of people in the design and/or movie studio industry) held a monopoly on magical, complex, amazing yard displays with interactive elements, projections, exquisite props and decorations, and that stirring of childlike wonder for the love of Halloween, but it turns out that here in Orange County, we've had one for years as well!

This loosely Haunted Mansion-inspired cemetery display is a veritable yard haunt amusement park. From a beautiful, life size hearse carriage featuring Henry Ravenswood's phantom from Phantom Manor as the driver to a host of intricate, gorgeous tombstones with punny and amusing epitaths… From the towering and customized 12 ft tall Home Depot skeleton gripping a bundle of crooning jack-o-lanterns to a trio of wise-cracking and melodic sheet ghosts to the side, this display is chock full of details. A little beyond the three singing sheet ghosts, a crypt reveals various spooky skeletal scenes. Against the garage door, silhouettes of various grave explorers showcase eerie moments. Look up to the second floor window above the entrance of this opulent Villa Park mansion. You might catch a spirit or two floating by.

After going half of October without seeing a 12 foot tall Home Depot skeleton, I’m now seeing them everywhere, each used more innovatively than the last!

The owners started this haunt innocently enough with a few store-bought tombstones and some basic commercial decorations. But through the power of the internet, they discovered numerous resources that taught them how to customize and innovate and craft more elaborate decorations and props beyond what was offered at a store. Before long, they were creating their own custom animatronics, fabricating pneumatic props, programming their own haunt projections, and basically manifesting an attraction so elaborate and immersive that it would do their muse, Walt Disney, proud!

Phantom Hollow is an incredible yard display that astounds and entertains. It is truly epic. Kids will be amazed at the different bits of entertainment. Adults will gawk at the scale and scope of this whole production. Everyone will thoroughly enjoy this, unless they have zero Halloween spirit.

The phantom hearse is a clear highlight of this display and will spark much joy in Haunted Mansion / Phantom Manor fans!

Phantom Hollow is located at 9852 Verde Lomas Cir, Villa Park, CA 92861 and is open tonight from 6:30 - 10:30pm. It typically runs with full effects nightly, though the winds last week did put a bit of a damper on operations. It’s a safe bet that this will be back next year, so mark it on your to-visit list!

Another fantastic side effect of Phantom Hollow is its effect on the neighborhood. Phantom Hollow is on a relatively short street, but several other neighbors have also decorated their houses with a variety of different types of decorations. The other displays on Verde Lomas Circle are nowhere as elaborate as Phantom Manor, but they do add ambiance.

This house at the end of the street has an eclectic collection of inflatable creatures.

These skeletons don’t seem to mind the invading arachnids that have taken over their home.

There are a couple of homes with inflatable figures that are commonly found at stores like Home Depot, Lowes, or Target. One even incorporates a strictly Disney character theme. Another house has been completely overrun by spiders. One even has a shark attacking??

My favorite was probably the glow in the dark skeletons joining forces with giant black spiders to attack the house across the street! With a curving cobweb tunnel and moody purple lighting, it seemed to match the aesthetic (or at least illumination tone) of its more prominent fellow haunted home!

Perhaps the previous skeletons were cheering on this army of bones invading another house.

Disney inflatables is the theme of this yard display!

During Christmas time, there are neighborhoods all over Southern California where the entire street seems to have been dressed up for the holidays. We don’t see that quite as much in Southern California, so it’s pretty wonderful to see neighborhoods with a more unified Halloween presence!

And that concludes this round of Orange County spoops. This year, I’ve been exploring a lot more home haunts in Orange County, and it’s definitely dispelling the old notion that only L.A. brings the Halloween game to the table. There are plenty of residences in the OC showcasing their creative talents and their October passion to create some fantastic exhibits for the rest of us to enjoy. They’re definitely putting a sharp damper to the notion that Halloween might be cancelled by this pandemic. Halloween may take different forms, but it can certainly never be silenced!