Highbury Cemetery, 2024

Year twenty one is now complete and another successful season for the Highbury Cemetery yard haunt is in the books! For once, the weather cooperated throughout the week leading up to trick-or-treat, allowing me ample time to set up, adjust, and perfect. Trick-or-treat itself, while down in total attendance a bit from last year (something I have noticed across the board??), went off without a hitch with perfect plumes of thick fog rolling across vibrant colors and shadows of a warm evening. All in all, 2024 turned out to be one of our better years.

So without further ado, I'll get to the good stuff... 

Ladies and gentlemonsters, boils and ghouls, I proudly present Highbury Cemetery, 2024. Enjoy!

When all was said and done, we ended up having 203 trick-or-treaters, parents, neighbors, and curious onlookers through the gates of Highbury Cemetery this year. A little bit lower than last year's total, but I'll still take it.

And before I end it, I can't go without giving a special thanks to everyone who helped put on the show this year. I couldn't do it without your help and your presence in just making the whole night a ton of fun. Special Highbury Cemetery thank you t-shirts go out to: Mrs. Highbury, Christian Highbury, Sharon, Karen, Laurie, Stacey and Vince, and Brother Scrapes. And an extra high five to the group of neighborhood kids who hung out around the yard and scared the other trick-or-treaters who came up. I think they all had a blast and I hope I'm sowing the spooky seeds for the next generation of haunters. Keep up the good work, kids!!

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So there you have it. Halloween, 2024 is done and dusted and the Cemetery is closed for another year. Twenty one years of home haunting and still going strong. The success of this year again has me motivated to start on next year's display. As always, a few improvements on existing ideas and a few new ideas to add to the mix...

Only 363 days until Halloween. Are you ready?

 

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Original Score - "Main Title"

So nothing going on today at the Cemetery but the last of putting everything away for another year. Definitely a low energy day, and I wasn't even going to post anything today. Until I caught wind of this!

After TWELVE YEARS of working on this deal, Waxwork Records is FINALLY announcing the release of what horror score and soundtrack collectors (like myself) consider one of the true holy grails, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre original 1974 film score by Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell!

I am beyond excited for this! And if the rest of the score is anything like this first track, it will be a mandatory purchase for horror and Halloween fans alike! Press play and 30 seconds in, you will know exactly what this is!

Enjoy!

  

The Wreck Of Highbury Cemetery

I had been riding a wave of good luck and fortune throughout this Halloween season... and unfortunately that luck just ran out.

Our neighborhood trick-or-treat was Sunday night, but I wanted to keep the display up and running through Halloween night to keep the spooky orange-and-black vibes going. My plan was to run the full show on Halloween night, just as a worthy sendoff to another incredible season (even if nobody else would see it, I could bask in the glow of my hard work one more time this year). I decided to go to work on Halloween, blasphemous I know. And that's when I got the call...

The winds had REALLY picked up and had started to devastate the display. I cut out at lunch and headed home to assess the damage. By the time I got home, it was too late. Tombstones were blown from their mounts, my 12 ft. skeleton had almost completely blown over due to a break in the metal frame base, and worst of all, my entire arch entryway had blown over, snapping the arched sign in half and heavily damaging one of the pillars. Gah, my heart sunk.

With the help of Mrs. Highbury, we quickly pulled in the damaged pieces and then pulled in anything else that could have been the next victim of the whipping winds. Suffice to say that Halloween did not end the way I had hoped, but in a rare glimmer of optimism, I took stock of everything and quickly realized that all of the pieces could be repaired and will be used again in next year's display. I'll definitely have my work cut out, but it will fuel the determination for 2025.

So Halloween ends on a sour note, but overall it was another jam-packed amazing season. I'll keep riding this high for another couple of weeks, and I still have quite a bit to share. So let's keep this thing going for a bit. Check back tomorrow for more post-Halloween Halloween fun.

Only 364 more days to go. Are you ready?