Halloween is absolutely terrifying in Saint John, NB. In no way is this a competition but this man on the west side of town has the coolest display of all. I was just asking him if the scarecrow by the door would be substituted by a real person in costume to spring a surprise on the big night when his son demonstrated that it was animatronic. That surprise was already covered.
Just imagine what this place will look like on Halloween night. These pictures were taken 3 weeks early and he was just beginning to assemble everything. Check out the video of his animatronic horror in motion!
Landing in Fredericton, I quickly got in the mood for Halloween when I popped into Dollarama and got myself a warm hat. They had lots of cheap scary toys.
And lots of rubber vermin.
Flying vermin.
Mutant vermin.
I hadn't seen anything yet. Home Depot had these truly enormous evil skeletons. With something this large, you can't help but wonder how you could possibly get them home. The answer is they come partially disassembled in a box.
Dad humored me and stood between them to give a better perspective of just how large these things were.
Some houses have mutant spider problems.
This is a wonderful display on Douglas Ave.
The coffin below is handmade and the severed hands crawl around on top.
Bat houses.
After all these wonderful decorations on people's front yards, I was excited to check out the Haunted Campground event at Rockwood Park. Sadly, it was a disappointing affair. When I'd first heard about it, the information posted on the net was contradictory. Originally the post said the terror would begin on the 19th and later, without deleting the first mistake, it would begin on the 26th. I should have taken that as a bad sign. That's exactly what it was.
6 pm was scheduled as Scary-Lite, a toned-down version of the adventure for small children. The real horror would begin at 7 pm. It was all Scary-Lite.
This odd figure in the trees might have been intended as Bigfoot. It was barely visible off in the dark distant trees and only this much was seen by the flash of my camera. Bigfoot? Big deal.
Um, seriously? A balloon ghost? That is rather low end.
I suppose a little work went into the giant spider but you had to look a few times to make sure that's what it was.
This poor woman's job was to lie on that cold cold ground and startle people as they walked by. But you couldn't see her, just some dark shape going Rahhhhh. Whether a zombie or rabid meth addict, she was the scariest thing in the whole park and nobody could see her without flash cameras.
Look out for that scary witch, if you can even see her. Nothing was lit very well and I believe they were counting on that to hide how lame and lackluster everything was just as monster movies from the 1950s wouldn't show the goofy monster until the end.
So, out of 5 stars, I give the Rockwood Park Haunted Campground a zero. That's right. Zero stars. The shame of it is that there is a demand for this type of thing in Saint John. There was a long line when I entered and a longer one when I was leaving. That is a lot of people to disappoint. A father with three children decided at the gate that the 14-dollar admission was too steep and turned right around. He was so right!
From the park, I headed downtown, riding up Waterloo Rowe (significantly scarier than the whole park fiasco) past meth addicts pimping out the one woman in the gang for a fix, past the sketchy bars on Union Street and down to the newly gentrified downtown core for something much more wholesome, Saint John's first Day of the Dead celebration.
By the time I arrived, any ceremonies or events were finished. Even so, more real effort was apparent here and there was no admission fee. This spectacular altar spanned more than half of the short block. An alley to the left had Mexican music where a few Catrinas were still dancing.
Carving pumpkins up and sticking candles in them overnight condemns them to an early grave in a compost heap so I hope this idea of painting faces on pumpkins catches on. When the night is done, they are still edible.
The last time I lived in Saint John, back in the '80s, the door on the right was my apartment. There were two ground floor apartments then but I can see that one of the doors has been boarded up and there is just one big one now. The other apartment was 85 1/2 Newman Street. I was 85 1/2 1/2.
Although the neighborhood seems perfectly nice today, it was quite rough then. You can see the elementary school on the other side of the street. One day, the school children lit my garbage on fire on the street during their recess.
I knew the area could be violent. I was too broke most of the time to buy newspapers, so I didn't know much of what happened in the neighborhood until my mother warned me to be careful as there had been two murders within a 2-block radius in the space of 2 weeks.
During the Christmas holidays that year, a friend I'd worked with in Saint Andrews the previous summer, surprised me with a visit and the gift of two new pairs of shoes. He figured I was in need of footwear and he was right. The shoes I had at the time had too many holes for a Saint John winter. Larry had grown up in this part of the North End and had known one of the convicted killers I had heard about through Mom. He'd visited the mother of the guy who'd stabbed his girlfriend to death. Since her son went directly to jail and Santa wouldn't visit him that year, she gave the shoes, which had been intended as Christmas presents, to Larry to pass on to anyone who needed them. Larry immediately thought of me and I had new shoes.
I thought the person in the red car was waiting for the ferry but they don't dock here anymore. A man Dad used to work with in the 60s used to have a cottage on one of the islands that we stayed at when we were small children. Surely you can still get to that island but not from here. This is a public boat launching site now.
Saint John Regional Hospital
Possibly a back entrance to Rockwood Park
It's the original Dairy Queen. We had a fund-raising car wash there one Saturday in the 70s for my fencing group.
I came across this nice beachy section of the river I've never seen before.
The Irving Pulp Mill is never far from sight.
There are deer everywhere in this town! They have become semi-domesticated animals. In the city, no one is allowed to shoot them and there is plenty to eat. Apples are dropping from the trees.
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