Dusk had almost given way to dark on a recent Friday, and the sounds of the living dead and other blood-curdling ghouls fill the cool air around an otherwise ordinary home in central Hermosillo.
But this time of year, the house is hardly visible through the intricate Halloween display. Skulls and full skeletons, witches that share cackling refrains, snaking strands of lights, brightly lit jack-o-lanterns, and countless other All Hallow’s Eve knickknacks.
From the roof, a giant inflatable spider keeps watch over the sizable stream of admiring families that come and go every October night.
“My favorite part is the ….” said a young girl, pausing to give it some thought. “The ghost.”
“That’a a source of pride for us,” said Juan Guillermo González, who, together with his siblings, has put together the display for now 23 uninterrupted years. “That people come and enjoy it.”
He claims that as many as 1,000 people visit nightly, which is easy to believe given the steady crowd of dozens, with families constantly cycling in and out to enjoy their labor love.
And it’s a lot of labor.
“We started on Sept. 20, and we finished on Oct. 2,” he said. “It opened to the public on Oct. 3.”
Everyone chips in, but González, an electrical engineer, did all the wiring himself, and the energy intensive display even has its own fuse box.
Idaho connection
The origin of the unique tradition traces back nearly three decades, and more than a thousand miles north. In the 1990s, González worked in forestry in Idaho, and in October would marvel at the effort people put into Halloween decorations, which he said rivaled the Christmas light displays.
When he returned to Sonora, he suggested to his sister picking up some of their own decorations, which quickly outgrew the house and spilled out into the yard.
“And outside, it started growing, growing and growing, to what you see today,” he said.
Not a common sight
“They are not common,” said Hermosillo’s municipal historian Ignacio Lagarda of such Halloween houses. “They’re, shall we say, recent historically.”
The 62-year-old Sonoran said that there was nothing like it when his generation was growing up in the city, but that Halloween started becoming a noticeable presence for their children.
He called it an example of the sort of cultural exchange that border regions are known for. Along with Halloween, he said that Thanksgiving has also established a presence in Sonora, despite the lack of historical foundation.
Halloween also comes right before Día de Muertos, an important national holiday when many honor their dead loved ones by building altars, tending to their graves, and otherwise paying respects.
“Halloween is about terror,” he said. “And here, it’s the other way around, it’s a holiday to celebrate our departed ancestors.”
But despite what he sees as a tension in spirit, and the proximity between the holidays, Lagarda doesn’t see a conflict between them, or the risk of Halloween displacing Día de Muertos.
“They run in parallel,” he said. “And they always will.”
And that’s exactly how it goes at González’s Halloween house.
“We finish up with this on Nov. 1,” he said. “Because we also have our dead, and we go to honor them.”
But for a few more nights at least, the crowds will keep coming. On this Friday, young children were clapping and stomping on the sidewalk to set off the motion-activated witch and other horrors. Some reached their arms through the fence to try and touch the ghosts and other creepy creatures.
Halloween traditions
From the road, Brenda Guerrero and her family were taking it all in. Their van’s sliding door was open, and their faces glowed orange.
“We’ve been coming to the Halloween house for several years,” she said, adding that as October nears, her three children start asking to come. But it’s not their only Halloween tradition.
“Before the pandemic, we would dress up and go to houses asking for sweets,” said 12-year-old Giovanna, the eldest.
And her mother Brenda said that they’ve been doing that every year since Giovanna was a toddler, and often with a shared theme for all the siblings. Asked what he was going to dress up as this year, the middle sibling, 8-year-old Juan Pablo, said a streaming series provided the inspiration, but he couldn’t immediately remember which one. With a little help from Giovanna, he recalled that it was Dragon Ball Z, and the hero Goku would be his costume.
“I also like Goku!” the youngest, 6-year-old Diego, exclaimed.
It seems they may have to share the idea this year.
