ROCKINGHAM — Trick-or-Treaters be warned: the journey to candy at The Skyline Horror is not for the faint of heart.
Let’s be honest, few houses that participate in the Halloween tradition of giving out candy are trying to give their young visitors a true scare. The first thing you’ll see as you approach the house, located on the corner of Skyline Drive and Ardsley Road in Rockingham, will be Slender Man looming over the property.
Next you will likely notice a large structure with some kind of bag hanging from it — but the bag is shaped like a body … and there’s a red liquid pooling at the bottom. Fog will billow out into the street, and from there the fun is only just beginning.
“Nobody’s safe,” said Anthony Bristow, 23, whose handiwork is behind much of the creations that lurk around the property.
As a kid, Bristow was often left out of the Halloween festivities because they lived so far out in the middle-of-nowhere outside of Ellerbe. Then when they moved to Rockingham when was 6 or 7, as a child of a working single mother, he still couldn’t participate because he didn’t have anyone to chaperone him.
The first time his mother, Beth, was able to get Halloween off from work, Anthony had already “out grown” it, though he was still young. They decided then to bring Halloween to them, at first starting with a few tombstones which got a positive reaction. It only grew from there.
“After the first year the goal was always to be the best,” Bristow said.
Things took a turn for the ghoulish when Bristow took a job at Party Poopers, a since-closed Halloween costume store in Rockingham. Anything that was damaged his boss would give him, so amassed a huge collection. That collection included the manikin from the front window, which became Slender Man.
On Halloween night (or whichever night the community agrees to hold the tradition depending on weather) Bristow said there could be as many as 12 people in costumes waiting to terrorize anyone who walks within range.
Bristow, now a broker at Iron Horse Auctions, said some Trick-or-Treaters are in and out with candy, while others will stand in the yard for 45 minutes trying to build up their courage — or they just never get out of their car.
Once they get to the blacked-out porch, Trick-or-Treaters are greeted by a buffet of saran-wrapped chunks of human meat and an open casket-viewing of an unfortunate Scotland High School football fan.
All this terror is not for nothing: Beth Bristow beckons from the far corner of the porch with more than 300 full-sized candy bars as well as goody-bags for the brave ones who make it to the end.
“If you come here looking for a haunted house you’re going to be disappointed but, in terms of Trick-or-Treating, I think it’s one of the best houses you can go to,” Bristow said.
Bristow said that their neighbors have made a tradition of cooking out, setting up lawn chairs and watching the Trick-or-Treaters get terrorized all night long. Beth Bristow said that some parents have asked if some the costumed participants could come with a way to really scare their kids.
“I’m like, ‘No!’ That’s just so wrong!” she said.
The classic horror film “Halloween” (1978) was a major inspiration for Bristow.
“The level of suspense is what really gets people and that’s what goes into the house,” he said. “I do the decorating at night so the kids on the school bus don’t see how the stuff works.”
Bristow said he didn’t get the fascination with Slender Man at first, so it was relatively short to start with. But when it got so much positive reaction, he kept making it taller. His grandmother has now sewn together four pairs of slacks together to make pants long enough for the specter.
While many of the main attractions are hand made by Bristow and his mother, some were given by friends and other Halloween nuts who were moving away and couldn’t take it with them. The corpse in the front yard — there’s another hanging from the porch — hangs on a bamboo structure Bristow made himself with skills he honed as an Eagle Scout.
The support from the community has pushed the Bristows to keep adding new nightmares to their collection.
“There’s times with work and all that that I wonder why I’m still doing it, but I can’t walk through Walmart of to the grocery story without people asking if I’m doing the house,” Bristow said. “I bet I’ll see 300 people on Halloween night and we get to just hang out a bit.”
Now that his house has gotten recognition from the broader community, Bristow said he finds himself driving around to see what the competition is up to. He takes pride in the fact that people who live far away or who don’t have time to Trick-or-Treat all night will still make a point to stop by his house.
“I like knowing that even if you don’t (Trick-or-Treat) you still get to come to our house and have a good time,” he said.
