Haunted house collects more than scares

RIO RANCHO — Step aboard, if ye dare.

Loma Colorado resident Lisa Trujillo and her son Michael are lookout for more than tricks and treats during their annual haunted house this Halloween. The duo is also hosting a food drive for Roadrunner Food Bank.

As you pull up to the house at 105 Los Miradores Drive NE, the pirate them is evident with skeletons dressed for the high seas scattered throughout the yard, which also features a graveyard and pumpkin patch.

“We’ve actually done it for a number of years. It gets bigger each year,” Lisa said. “We’ve always enjoyed Halloween, my son and I. We build and assemble all the props, just the two of us.”

Those props include a combination of static displays, animatronics, projections and pneumatics. Some are bought, some are repurposed and some are built by the Trujillos. Even the purchased items usually require a personal touch for the Trujillos’ display, such as texturizing or detail work.

“We started off really small with just doing a U-shaped walk through the garage, and the neighborhood just really got a kick out of it,” she said. They decided to start building their own walls and expanding the experience, but the haunted house still fits in the 16-foot by 16-foot two-car garage.

One of the new displays this year is actually outside the haunted house: a blacklight under-the-sea scene of a diver and coral reefs. Lisa said she spent two days using hot glue to make the reefs out of packing peanuts and covering them in glow-in-the-dark paint. She said she continues to be surprised at how a simple concept made out of simple materials can have such a strong visual impact.

She also said, in addition to building some of the panels with intricate detail, making clothes (or repurposing items from Goodwill) for the skeleton pirates, texturizing and adding details to purchased paneling or grave stones, and even rewiring a talking toy parrot, it takes months to put the display and haunted house together.

But it’s all worth it when Halloween rolls around. “This neighborhood gets really crazy on Halloween,” Lisa said. “Halloween is big here. It’s just as big as Christmas.”

In fact, last year on Halloween, she said about 300 people came through with the line backed up to the top of the street. “It got pretty hectic with just the two of us” running things, she said.

The Trujillos will be open Halloween night from 6-9 p.m., but that’s not the only opportunity to attend.

”We usually like to try to do a preview on the weekend before Halloween,” Lisa said, with one more preview night from 6-8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26.

One aspect they didn’t have last year was the canned food drive, though it is something they have done in previous years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Getting the word out about that is tough,” Lisa said.

But, it’s something the neighbors are familiar with. “We’ve been doin it a long time, and everybody knows to bring a can,” she said.

However, donating is not a requirement to go through the haunted house, saying they’re “really informal.”

“It’s totally free. You’re not required to bring a donation,” Lisa said. “We just always do this because we really enjoy it.”