Watch a video report on John Worley's haunted house
The first step is the most frightening.With it, you enter a disturbing world of skeletons, coffins, headless torsos and power tools.
“The price is right,” John Worley hollered Saturday night, just before several people ducked into the darkly decorated garage of his south Missoula home.
Worley knows a little something about what's scary. In a 25-year horse racing career, he broke 42 bones. Three of his close friends were killed.
“I don't know how many steel plates and screws there are in me right now,” the retired jockey said.
Whereupon Worley snapped on a spooky hockey mask, pulled a black cloak up over his head and disappeared into a fog made clear by the staccato flashes of a strobe light.
All the better to manage the complex machinery of his home-turned-Hades.
Worley is not alone.
In 2006, Americans spent $3.2 billion buying Halloween decorations, a 21 percent increase over 2005, according to Unity Marketing, a data tracking firm.
The day of the undead is moving ever closer to Christmas in terms of dollars spent decorating.
Tabletop figurines, witches stirring cauldrons and inflatable lawn skulls have joined belly-jiggling Santas, wooden reindeer and Nativity scenes on the hot list this year, according to industry analysts.
About $5 billion of the seasonal decoration industry's $19.5 billion in annual sales come in fall, which includes back to school, Halloween and Thanksgiving, according to a study by Unity Marketing.
“Halloween was always kind of my favorite time of year since I was a little kid,” Worley said.
Despite having one of the more spectacularly creepy displays out there, Worley didn't contribute much to that $5 billion figure.
“I save money not buying stuff,” Worley says. “I go and look at stuff online, like that No Trespassing sign out front. It's $70 online, but I built it for like $8.50.”
“Those leaping ghosts,” Worley said, pointing over his shoulder into the black nightmare behind him. “I think I have $30 into each of those, but they want like $500 online.”
Of course, a lot of Worley's scare power comes from the real deal.
“My helpers have a new costume every year,” he said of the volunteers, one of whom springs from a coffin to tap the shoulders of unsuspecting passers-by.
This year, grandma is a decaying beauty whose bright eyes follow you eerily along the grotesque pathway through Worley's backyard.
And if grandma didn't give you the heebie-jeebies, then the skeletal lizard man who pops out of a shack littered with grizzled remains will.
“It was fun,” Robert Zawlocki and James Paxton declared at the same time, moments after finishing the horror course that ends in Worley's front yard.
“It was awesome,” Paxton continued.
“I liked it when the guy jumped out at us,” Zawlocki said, a bit breathless.
“Yeah, I tapped him on the shoulder,” Paxton said, checking over his own shoulder when a zombielike figure approached from behind.
The two neighborhood boys decided to go through again.
“It takes a couple of times to come through and see everything,” Worley said.
Setting up all the sights - er, frights - is a chore that takes about a month.
“It starts the first of the month,” Worley said. “And then it's just work, work, work.”
Worley spends up to six hours a day recharging 12-volt batteries used to raise the animatronic dead.
His friends know of his love for building, and provide scraps of wood or found items.
“Those aliens over there,” Worley said pointing to some small green men cavorting next to a 2-foot-long cockroach. “A friend seen 'em in a Dumpster (and picked them up) because they knew what I do.”
Worley even has a little three-legged hellhound named Sadie that gets in on the action.
“I'm thinking about putting a fake leg around her neck and having her drag it around,” Worley said of his costuming ideas for the big night.
With more than 300 visitors last year, the Worley house is near the top of private lists of places to go for fright night, especially because it's free.
But the lack of a fee doesn't stop the impressed from donating to the cause.
“I got to the point last year and the year before where people kept wanting to give me money,” Worley said. “I said, ‘No, no,' but last year I set up a jar and the last two years we took the money and bought coats when they did the coat drive for kids, and the year before we bought turkeys (for the needy) at Thanksgiving time.”
The switch from all-out Christmas decorations to Halloween is more practical than philosophical for Worley.
“This is a better time of year,” Worley said. “I don't have to deal with the real cold weather, the snow, I mean you get stuff frozen to the ground.”
And besides that, Worley lives for reactions.
“Seeing the looks on people's faces when they come through,” he said, recounting his favorite part of the evening. “Scaring the people is the most fun.”
The Worley house is open from 5 to 10 p.m. on Halloween. It is located at 2101 36th St. in Missoula.
Reporter Timothy Alex Akimoff can be reached at 523-5246 or at tim.akimoff@lee.net.
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