The second floor of Matt Burne's house is
burning, and he just stands on the front lawn smiling.
"Pretty cool, huh?," he asks with a devilish grin.
The fire and brimstone, it turns out, are
pretend, as is the ghost haunting the front window, the mad
scientist's laboratory in the garage and the electric chair in the dining room.
The
beast under the back stairs? That's Jessica, his pet boxer.
The old man would be proud.
"He showed up last
year," Mr. Burne says of Factoryville dentist Richard Bush, who made
Mr. Burne's childhood Halloweens fright nights to remember by
transforming his home into a first-rate chamber of horrors.
"He was touched by the whole thing, and so was I. To see him
25 years later standing in a 'laboratory' named in his honor was
incredible.
"That really meant a lot to me."
For the
past three years, Mr. Burne has opened his home at 107 Sean Drive in
South Abington Township to guys and ghouls of all ages on Halloween
night, providing a no-charge, high-voltage spooktacular that drew
more than 2,000 visitors last Oct. 31.
It was a 1999 trip to
Salem, Mass., that got the memories of Dr. Bush's legendary haunts
pumping in Mr. Burne's veins again, and inspired him to chill the
blood of new generations.
"That was the thing about going to
Dr. Bush's when I was a kid. It was a tradition," he says.
"Literally everybody went there, and when it ended, it was pretty
traumatic.
"I wanted to give some of what I had back to the
community. I wanted to bring back the tradition."
In its
first year, the attraction was more haphazard than horrifying. "It
was really sort of last- minute," Mr. Burne remembers. "I called up
some friends and said, 'Listen, get a smoke machine and come up here
and we'll scare the kids.'"
Though small in scale, the
inaugural haunt was a huge success, and word-of-mouth quickly
spread. After a few newspaper stories promoted the 2000 edition, Mr.
Burne expected last year's sequel to draw 300 to 400 people.
He was in for a shock.
"I was running around getting everything ready to go, and
someone said, 'Matt, you better look outside,'" he says. "I go out
and there's like 1,000 people in my front yard.
"I said, 'We
better get some more candy.'"
Candy is a big part of the
event. Mr. Burne says he gives away about $2,000 worth of treats
each year, mostly during "The Haunt on Sean Drive," which runs from
6 to 7:30 p.m. That segment of the evening's agenda is suitable for
audiences of all ages.
After 7:30, however, "The Terror on
Sean Drive" opens, and the faint-of-heart may want to hop the next
broom home. A demon waits in the flames on the second floor. A
bottomless pit yawns in the kitchen. There's a beheading every 30
minutes.
And it all starts with a welcome from "Dr. Bush,"
played by a friend of Mr. Burne's, one of several struggling actors,
comedians and musicians who donate their time.
"We're all
just a bunch of big kids," Mr. Burne says as he powers up the
"Transformatron," a Hollywood-quality special effect that has to be
seen to be believed.
"We probably always will be."
If you go
WHAT: "The Haunt on Sean Drive"
WHERE: 107 Sean Drive, South Abington Township
WHEN: Oct. 31, beginning at 6 p.m.
ADMISSION: Free, but get there early a "headless
horseman" will ride in to kick the whole thing off.
DIRECTIONS: Take Route 6 to South Abington Road. Turn
right onto Edella Road and continue up the hill for about two miles.
Bear left around the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Day Saints
onto Simrell Road. Sean Drive is the first left.
The legend
of Sean Drive
The ghost seen haunting the second floor of
Matt Burne's house is none other than Mary Beemer, who lived and
died in the Abington area in the early 1880s.
According to
Mr. Burne, Mary moved to the area from England with her husband and
10 children. One stormy Halloween night, she set out into the woods
on horseback. It is believed that she intruded upon the home of an
old witch, who cursed her to haunt those woods forever.
Mary
never returned, at least not in corporeal form, but her ghost still
rides...
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