Orange County Yard Haunts 2020: Millmur Manor, Pirates of Arbolita, Cemetery on 9th, and More
Orange County, CA
Happy #ShriekySunday! We’re rounding out our Orange County yard haunts for the season with a trip to north county, visiting some familiar sights and some new ones. We saw these home haunts over Halloween weekend, and a major component of them—La Habra’s Arbolita Drive—offered a bountiful treasure trove of Halloween displays. Much quieter this year on Halloween Even + COVID than last year on Halloween night, this local community nonetheless had plenty of visual treats for the Halloween enthused.
And last Sunday, we rounded out our Halloween season visits with some Buena Park haunts after a daytime visit to Knott’s Taste of Fall-O-Ween. We covered one in yesterday’s post, but that evening, we also checked out a SoCal Haunt List destination in the form of the Cemetery on 9th. Read on to see our continued haunting adventures!
Millmur Manor
Millmur Manor was home to The Haunted Rose’s Carter’s Crypt last year, but normally, this residence in the North Hills community of La Habra its own little haunt. So last Friday night before Halloween, I thought it would be fitting to stop by after my visit to The Haunted Rose’s The Colour Out of Space to check out this little cemetery display.
Eerie and colorful, Millmur Manor showed off its own haunting chops this year.
It's a nice, cozy one, with the typical assortment of gravestones, a couple of animatronics, and great lighting. A heavy dusting of fog also emanated from the corner. Beside the main display, along the driveway, there was also a massive spiderweb strung up toward the front door of the home. All of this created a weighty feeling of an invisible creep sneaking up through the veil.
There were plenty of horrid creatures lurking around the tombstones at the Millmur Manor cemetery!
Millmur Manor is located at 1500 Arbolita Dr, La Habra, CA 90631 and ran at least during the weekend of Halloween. But as you'll see in below, the greater treat was all the houses also decorated for Halloween along Arbolita Drive!
Pirates of Arbolita
The Pirates of Arbolita (I think this is another Parks and Cons nickname that’s stuck?) is located just up the street from Millmur Manor, on the other side of Brighton Street. This brightly decorated pirate ship has been delighting the neighborhood for at least the last few years that I've been paying attention, and it's even inspired its neighbor to put up a similar but smaller pirate ship display that's pretty darn adorable.
The Pirates of Arbolita display was bright, friendly, fun, and whimsical.
At the main vessel, Skeleton swashbucklers man the decks and seem to take joy in setting sail on a new adventures. Nearby, additional skeletons survey the scene from dock, and some even seem to be sliding across rigging to bring supplies to the ship!
String lights add an enchanting glow to the ambiance. A couple of other pirates survey from a lawn, and a projection provides additional buccaneer ambiance. It's all lovely and charming and a terrific part of the extensive Arbolita Halloween landscape!
Its neighbor also followed suit with an adorable “little brother” companion display!
The Pirates of Arbolita is located at 1820 Arbolita Dr, La Habra, CA 90631. Not on any official list, I can’t say when it ran, but I have a feeling that, with the Halloween spirit on Arbolita Drive, it was probably a solid portion of October, nightly.
“Arbolita Graveyard”
Across from the Pirates of Arbolita is an unnamed graveyard display that has its own collection of pirate skeletons... and monsters… and ghouls… and even a headless horseman! This struck me as a complementary pirates display initially, but I realized that was influenced by the Pirates of Arbolita and neighbor display across the street. A further look revealed quite an elaborate variety of Halloween characters, including several animatronics, that gave it a little more of a frightful feel that was more mature than aforementioned the kid-friendly display.
Across the street from the Pirates of Arbolita lie this detailed yard haunt.
The display was spread out across the two tiers of the residence’s front yard. The bottom tier featured a skeleton in gallows, several tombstones, skeleton parts, and even some skeleton animals, all illuminated by a somewhat harsh white light. The upper terrace included more gravestones and some motion-triggered animatronics, a picket fence, and plenty of Halloween string lights—also light brightly. It felt like a Spirit Halloween yard sale, but it was also a fun, spooky way of showcasing Halloween.
There was quite a diverse line-up of figures, props, and scenes!
This “Arbolita Graveyard” is located at 1821 Arbolita Dr, La Habra, CA 90631. I’m not sure which nights it ran specifically, but the lights were on well after 10:00pm on the Halloween’s Eve night that I was there.
Haunts Along Arbolita Drive
One of the great things about La Habra's Arbolita Drive that I discovered last year is that practically the whole neighborhood gets into Halloween. It was a literal block party on October 31, 2019, with throngs of people strolling up and down the street, packing it like a mall, spooky music blaring, excitement building, and autumn glee clearly on display. It was so busy last year that there was even a taco truck parked on the corner of Brighton Street and Arbolita!
This was one of the more relatively elaborate houses, located at 1300 Arbolita Drive.
Even this year, the ambiance was rich with several great Halloween displays up and down the block, incorporating a wide variety of themes. Clowns, vampires, dolls, monsters, spiders, zombies, and even a big drive-in were all game. The scope and scale of the houses varied, but there was certainly plenty of spirit! While few residences went to the extent of building custom, elaborate sets like we’ve seen with some of the premiere haunts—instead relying on Halloween lights and many store-bought props—there was still plenty of spooky atmosphere.
1261 Arbolita Drive featured this very illuminated display with all sorts of inflatable, home-made, projected, and traditional store-bought figures.
Some of my favorites included a large scale “drive-in” display with a Ghostbusters vibe; a sprawling two story residence with a plethora of villainous characters across its spacious lawn, including Pennywise, a pumpkin monster, a floating vampire, and more; a mishmash monster bash that included a creepy and unnerving dwarf monster; and a simple display that shined a laser array up onto a broad canopy tree with green and purple hanging pumpkin buckets and orange, glowing jack-o-lanterns along the stepped walkway to the front door.
At 1801 Arbolita Drive, a simple but elegant and scenic display featured some creative lighting and simple but effective arrangement.
These houses are located on Arbolita Drive in La Habra between Harbor Boulevard and N Palm street. I didn’t go on the other side of Arbolita or into neighboring streets to see if there were any other Halloween displays worth checking out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were.
Cemetery on 9th
The Cemetery on 9th was a SoCal Haunt List entry that ended up being pretty convenient to visit after my visit to Knott’s Berry Farm last Sunday. This intimate graveyard display provided a fun blend of different styles of doing these sorts of exhibits.
The Cemetery on 9th was green. Very green.
The green glow from the porch of the home itself provided an eerie backlight to a hanging ghoul in front of the entrance door, while a field of gravestones littered the lawn. An inflatable hearse with resting vampire within sat in one corner. And creatively, a couple gauze-y ghosts seem to fly overhead. The star of the display, though, goes to the incredibly creepy doll / girl animatronic sitting on a gravestone who turns her head to utter any one of several disquieting phrases when someone passes by. As luck would have it, a family was walking by when I was taking photos, and the wife reacted to the singsong voice with an “OH HAIL NO!”
Mission accomplished by this cozy and spooky little home haunt!
And it also had this disconcerting animatronic that gave people the chills!
The Cemetery on 9th is located at 8231 9th St, Buena Park, CA 90621 and ran nightly from Monday, October 19 through Halloween night. Hours ranged from 6:00 - 10:00pm on most nights and till 11:00pm on Fridays and Saturdays.
So ends our OC tour of 2020 yard haunts, but not our OC tour of haunts in general. We’ve got one more that constitutes our final Halloween attraction visit of the season. But first, we’re returning to Los Angeles County to recap several other haunts in east county and in the Burbank area. Stay tuned as we head downhill with our 2020 haunt coverage! Heck, we might even finish it before Christmas season coverage starts—or before Alaska finishes counting its votes!
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
