Haunted yard offers a variety of custom horrors
Running a haunted yard is something Taylor Baumann always wanted to do and this year, he finally decided to do it.
A Haunting on McDonald is a haunted yard that opened for the first time at 6 p.m. on Oct. 18 at 2116 McDonald Drive, Mount Pleasant. The yard will run from Oct. 25 until Halloween. The yard features animatronics, custom props and jump scares, said Baumann, the creator of the haunted yard. The yard is free to walk through, but he said donations are appreciated.
While Baumann has loved decorating for Halloween since he was a kid, he never felt he could run a full haunted house or yard. He’s lived near Mount Pleasant in the Rosebush area, but never in the city until about six months ago. He feels the Mount Pleasant community will be more responsive to the haunted yard.
“When you’re out in those sorts of areas, you don’t get the community support that you do when you live right here in Mount Pleasant,” Bauman said. “That’s when we moved into Mount Pleasant and I was like, ‘Alright, let’s try it.’”
Baumann designed the yard with help from his fiancé and family. He used an assortment of homemade and store-bought props for his yard, acquiring large parts of it from another Mount Pleasant haunted yard that had been operating for 22 years before the couple who ran it announced they would no longer be doing it.
When laying out a haunted yard, Baumann said he took everything he already owned before moving and built around those decorations. For instance, he had a lot of spider decorations that he built upon to create a spider lair. He also used backyard features like fountains and swing sets to create parts of the haunted yard, like turning a fountain into a witch.
He also planned out a path for people to take around his house, so people will encounter things in a certain order. Some features of the yard include a haunted toy shop, clown enclosure and witches lair. Around 30,000 lights were used to create the yard.
Baumann already had many props available beforehand to make some of these areas, but he created his own to add more to them. He took trips to Goodwill for old toys, such as dolls and stuffed animals, to burn, paint red and otherwise destroy to create the effect he was looking for.
Baumann said his yard is scary enough to frighten adults, utilizing sounds, mirrors and jump scares to create the horror. However, he still wanted to keep it accessible. That means no demons, weapons (some prop ones are OK), or straight-up gore.
There are also “timid hours,” which Baumann said are for younger children who don’t want to be jump scared. This means that jump scarers won’t be active during these times.
Overall, it took Baumann three months to plan out the haunted yard. He said he hopes to keep running it every year to add to the haunted yard. While it’s free to attend, Baumann said he greatly appreciates donations, saying part of it goes to Michigan Special Olympics and the rest goes to expanding the haunted yard.
He said he’s been looking for people to volunteer as jump scarers. A full schedule can be found on the yard’s Facebook page.
