OC Yard Haunts 2021: Quarantine Crazies
Brea, CA
(This year, I don’t intend on visiting a ton of haunted yard displays like I did last year, when there weren’t many actual walkthrough mazes at the home haunts, and the yard displays picked up the slack for Halloween. But I happened to stop by this site the same night last week that I visited SpeedZone L.A.’s Haunted Mini Golf, and since I don’t know when or if I’ll do another O.C. Yard Haunt run, I’m posting this attraction in a standalone article because it’s already open and ready to be enjoyed by all!)
Isn’t that little coronavirus the cutest thing ever?
Remember that haunted yard display we found last year that parodied the insanity and absurdity of the Coronavirus pandemic? You know the one bathed in blacklight featuring hideous skeletons and ghoulish creatures posed in all sorts of pandemic life, with visual puns on things like “hand sanitizer” and reminders to wash hand and keep clean and wear a mask?
Well, normally, homeowner Karen Ficke creates a different theme every year for her Halloween display, but with the COVID pandemic still ongoing, she decided for a rare repeat theme. This year, her display is called Quarantine Crazies, and it’s adapted last year’s yard haunt to show a few new items that weren’t around last year, like vaccines and adding homemade Coronaviruses that are way to charming for how destructive the real thing has been.
New this year is a vaccine menu of the top three choices. It’s not the typical three course meal, but it beats Ivermectin!
It’s all a bit of dry, absurd relief in the face of a serious health crisis (though far less so for the fully vaccinated), and we could use a laugh or two after the past year and a half of health safety measures and restrictions and hundreds of thousands of Americans dying. After al, if you don’t laugh, you cry, right?
At the end of the day, even if the theme is a bid morbid in the face of real life, it’s quite commendable to see what Karen has crafted with her creativity. Everything is hand made and personally lit, and you will not find any props simply purchased from a store. That’s pretty impressive and the true mark of a home haunter!
Pandemic Nightmare is located at 629 Maple Ave, Brea, CA 92821 and runs nightly through Halloween. Its general hours of operation are 7:00 - 11:00pm. In October, there are other yard displays around the neighborhood, which we covered in an OC Yard Haunts review last year.
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
