By Tyler Wright
Scary costumes and sweet treats were aplenty in Monbulk this Halloween, with hundreds of people flocking to celebrate the spooky season.
Locals Sophie Siegel and Glen McLeod held their own house party, decorating the front of their property with crosses and creepy hands coming out of the ground.
“We decorated the front yard and we had a barbecue and people came and brought lollies with them to act as a trick or treat bowl, which is great,“ Sophie said.
Harley Quinn and the joker, horses being ridden down the street painted as a skeleton, and Glen’s ’gross-eries’ outfit were all part of the spectacle.
A chef by trade, Glen got creative by ghoulish treats – including eyeball cupcakes and spiderweb curried eggs.
“Jenny from across the road bought 360 little tic tac containers – she thought that would be heaps – she went through 170 in 23 minutes,“ Glen said.
“There was a big contingent from The Patch Primary School…there would have been about 700 kids there.
In preparation for the spookiest event on the holiday calendar, the couple created a Facebook page to help people understand the etiquette of trick or treating.
“We moved to Monbulk just before Covid and our eldest child is five, so prior to us being here and Covid there have been houses that have gone all out for Halloween, but after Covid – the first year back – everyone was looking for community engagement,“ Glen said.
“We realised that there’s a lot of people who have moved to the hills since Covid.“
Sophie said most parents do not have the experience of trick or treating on Halloween, with older people wanting to participate but not realising they need to put decorations out.
“They get the lollies and they get upset that no one came to their door because they didn’t realise that they need to put the decorations out to indicate that, so there was a lot of confusion around it,” she said.
Sophie said there were mixed reactions to the Facebook page she and Glen created a few weeks out from the day.
“There was a few people like ’I don’t understand why we celebrate Halloween, it’s an American thing’ and then there’s a bunch of other people who live on this road that are like ’I used to be a Halloween Scrooge and then I experienced it and I realised why people like it,’“ she said.
“We didn’t get into it before this, but we realised how much fun it is and we invited some of our older neighbours as well who don’t have kids my parents came up from Croydon and they just loved sitting there and watching all the kids in costumes
“It’s that sort of vibe – it’s full on because it’s just constant groups of kids and my kids were handing out lollies to them – they were kind of overwhelmed but loving it.“
Glen said he would like to get local schools involved in next year’s Halloween celebrations and see teenagers on their bikes marshalling the streets.
“We even spoke about getting a local real estate agent to sponsor some ’don’t knock’ signs that people put on their letter boxes so you don’t get 300 children knocking on your door asking you if you’ve got candy,“ he said.
