Lakeshore Road resident gets gory again with annual Halloween display
October 21, 2024 at 4:04 AM
For several months of the year, the front yard of Gord Smith’s Lakeshore Road house is a busy place.
After Remembrance Day, he begins setting up an elaborate Christmas display, but in the weeks leading up to Halloween it’s a full-blown exhibit of gore and horror.
He has a skeleton scientist performing surgery on a patient with its guts spilling out of its body, made from spray foam and red spray paint.
There is a skeleton getting plowed over by a snowblower, another skeleton spraying neon vomit coming from a barrel full of water and the inside of several Hi-Liter markers, a man getting fried in an electric chair, and a whole lot more.
Gord Smith works on one of his gory Halloween displays at his Lakeshore Road home. Credit: Kris Dubé | Fort Erie RadioBetween Christmas and Halloween, he has about $25,000 worth of decorations he puts out each year.
He “started simple” when he moved into the home in 2020.
“And then I got kind of carried away,” he said when Fort Erie Radio stopped by for a recent tour, showing off all the displays and explaining how they work.
He loves treating the public to his work each year, and said about 500 people came by last Halloween.
Gord Smith had about 500 people come to his house for Halloween last year. Credit: Kris Dubé | Fort Erie RadioSmith buys a lot of the large skeletons, as well as department store mannequins, from stores and online. But he also makes use of things he has around the house, including a small picnic table used by his granddaughter when she was younger.
He sat two small skeletons at the table and has them sitting together eating bloody body parts.
Where does he come up with some of these ideas?
“They just occur to me as I’m walking around,” said Smith, who admits he is a big fan of the horror genre.
He’s 61 years old and is a retired health and safety engineer who worked in the far north of Canada on Baffin Island in the mining industry.
His wife Melissa prefers the Christmas display, but “shakes her head” sometimes at him about how much time and effort he puts in, he joked.
He also admits that he’s had some young kids too “petrified” to walk onto the lawn, while others stop by several days a week to check out his progress during the Halloween season.
He also puts out a box to collect donations for Community Outreach Program Erie (COPE).
“Why don’t we make something good out of this? We get so many people stopping by,” he said was a mindset that made him collect for the local food bank a few years ago.
It’s a “labour of love” and the response he gets, such as people pulling up in their cars and stopping to check everything out.
“It’s why I do it, because people enjoy it,” he said.
One of many creative displays across Greater Fort Erie, Smith’s house is located at 260 Lakeshore Road.
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About The Author
Kris Dubé
Kris is a veteran journalist who has worked in Niagara for close to 20 years. He is also a lifelong resident of Fort Erie, a place he plans to call home and raise his family for many more years.
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