Hooked on Halloween: Al Stahler of Menlo Park just loves scaring kids Hooked on Halloween: Al Stahler of Menlo Park just loves scaring kids (October 29, 2003)

By Jane Knoerle
Almanac Staff Writer

Al Stahler is a genial, soft-spoken man who, all-year-long, dreams up fiendish displays for his home on Halloween. This year's theme is "Pirates of the Caribbean."

He won't tell all, but hints at a life-size reproduction of the "Black Pearl" pirate ghost ship. There will be booming cannons, dancing skeletons in the captain's cabin, "live and dead" pirates.

He also plans to recycle 40 plastic rats from last year's production, "The Swamp."

Halloween is Al Stahler's favorite holiday. He leaves Christmas and Easter to his wife, Christine. "I can barely get him to put up the Christmas lights," she says.

Mr. Stahler got hooked on Halloween when he was 13. "I was too old to go trick-or-treating, so I started decorating my parents' front porch," he says. For the first few years after Al and Christine were married and moved to their Menlo Park home, they held a Halloween party in the basement.

As their daughters, Kathleen, 12, and Amanda, 8, grew older, the event moved to the front yard. "The first year, I put out a 6-foot spider with glowing eyes and played scary music. We got five trick-or-treaters. Last year we gave out 300 pieces of candy," he says.

The displays started getting more elaborate in 1999 when Mr. Stahler put on a thunder-and-lightning storm, complete with 1,000-watt speakers and "15-foot flames of hell fire from the bowels of the earth."

A couple of years later, giant interactive 3-D ghosts floated over the front yard. Last year, trick-or-treaters had to cross a swaying footbridge suspended over a "lake," while listening to creepy sound effects. A couple of skeletons and a giant spider added to the atmosphere.

Mr. Stahler has plenty of help in his Halloween endeavors, especially from his sisters, Mary and Ann. Good friends Andy and Sue Munoz come over from Reno to lend a hand. Andy's specialty is sound engineering. Expect to hear pirates singing, sounds of a creaking ship, and lots of moaning.

Christine and the girls also help, and the whole family will dress as pirates. Mr. Stahler points out his sets are built from scrap and are recycled for the next year. "The bridge we built last year came from a fence that was being torn down in Pacifica."

At 5 p.m. on Halloween night, Mr. Stahler and crew will be frantically putting last-minute touches on this year's spectacle. "It's intensely creative work for a few days. All the juices start flowing," he says.

Safety cones disguised as ghosts will line the front of the Valparaiso Avenue home to make access easier for trick-or-treaters.

Isn't it hard to take everything down after all that effort? "No. I feel very satisfied after it's over," he says. Then he has time to bask in kids' compliments, such as "Man, this is so cool," or "Your house rocks."

He recalls: "One little kid was too scared to come to the door and stood across the street with his mother. But he talked about it all year long. The next year he came right up."