Guest Post from Love Manor

It's October 13th... The Halloween spirit is in the air. From carving Jack O' Lanterns, watching horror movies, consuming a vast amount of sweets and fall-inspired food to completely renovating the home into a haunted mansion, this season certainly is a busy one for us over at Love Manor.

 

Love Manor is a home haunt that I and my family conjure up every year for this haunting holiday. I've always decorated for Halloween, sure at first it mainly consisted of pumpkins and orange light strands in the bushes (which we call Boo Blinkers), however for the past several years we have taken it a little above and beyond. It all started with a little search online to see what others were doing and I found out the possibilities were endless. However, I wanted to make my display, my world and vision of Halloween, different and unique. I strived to make sure that everything I love about Halloween can be seen throughout my decorations and props. I also had the ambition to create a central theme that each year would branch off of. Being inspired by Disney's Haunted Mansion made it clear that, I too, wanted to achieve a haunted mansion atmosphere with an elegant interior full of dark corridors and rich detail as well as a backstory to draw in and captivate visitors.

As stated, I worked hard to create a central theme that would allow us to also have the ability to work with "sub" themes every year. For instance we have done a Graveyard theme which gave visitors a take on whom lies within the ground around the manor and a mad scientist theme that showed what went on deep in the cellars of the estate. This year, we will be able to show and tell where Love Manor exists, in our magical world of Halloween. So we're throwing a soirée on the haunted bayous of New Orleans! It sounded like a lot of work but after going to the drawing boards and revisiting them several times, we came up with a way to guide our guests from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles to a magical world emerging from the past where anything feels possible.

Naturally, we had to flood the yard and bring in a lot of Spanish Moss to engulf the trees and architecture of the home. We also have constructed a shack that stands above the "bayou" and incorporated a lot of voodoo artwork (painted in UV reactive paint) that will help guide guests up to the home. Those that take the time to admire the details will be sure to notice twinkling fireflies and fluttering dragonflies across the surface of the Bayou. Inside, we will be hanging up dozens of blue paper lanterns to illuminate the festivities as well as a dining room full of New Orleans inspired food such as Gumbo and fresh beignets… and a live jazz band to top it all off! 

Who knows what areas of Love Manor we will focus on in years to come? I'd love to go more in depth with a storyline of the ghosts that haunt the grounds as well as the monsters that terrorize it. A little darker, yet still elegant and tasteful, but just enough to give you a few nightmares… I hope that through my display I can inspire others to get into the spirit of this fantastic and frightful holiday that comes and goes too quickly. Halloween will always be very close to my heart. It's a time of the year where as if you feel anything is possible. Perhaps that was a witch you saw cross the moon on an evening stroll, or there is a gruesome monster lurking in the bushes behind you. Let your imagination run wild and have a very Happy Halloween.

Johnny Love

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