One Toronto street is upping the chilling charm factor as a number of neighbours have opted to decorate their homes with identical inflatable ghosts.
With Halloween right around the corner, there’s no shortage of things to do. Whether you want to get the daylights scared out of you at a haunted house or don your cutest costume at one of the seemingly infinite parties happening around the city, there’s no end to the thrills and chills the season can bring.
Some, though, prefer to take on a more wholesome approach to celebrating the holiday, such as the residents of Essex Street, between Ossington and Shaw.
For around three years now, the less-than-150 metre stretch has been home to a hauntingly wholesome tradition that the street’s residents affectionately refer to as “Ghost Alley.”
Essex Street is home to over a dozen inflatable ghosts spaced out over less than 150 metres.
“It started off as just two or three houses,” one resident tells blogTO, standing proudly beside his own towering spectre, “and it’s taken a few years to get to this point.”
What began as more of a coincidence than a concerted effort — the inflatables are sold at Canadian Tire and go for $100 — has slowly but surely amounted to an annual tradition, with additional neighbours (some begrudgingly, some enthusiastically) joining the cause.
Back-to-back ghosts loom over Essex Street.
Though reminiscent of Inglewood Drive’s annual invasion by gigantic Santa inflatables, the much smaller-scale Ghost Alley isn’t currently held in support of any charitable organization (so-called “Kringlewood” collects donations for Daily Bread Food Bank), but rather out of the sheer fun of it all.
Just blocks away from Essex Junior and Senior Public School, one resident tells blogTO that perhaps the most rewarding element of all is watching kids pass down the ‘alley’ in wonder, marveling at the row of harmless haunts.
A pair of ghosts beckon from two homes on the street.
It’s also made the neighbourhood more of a destination come Halloween night, he notes.
“Some years we didn’t even bother shelling out because so few kids came [Trick or Treating,]” he tells blogTO, “but last year we had over 100.”
The 12-foot ghosts are visible on the lawns of 18 homes this year.
While Ghost Alley is no where near comparable in scale to its December-based cousin up north in Moore Park, it has just as much heart, and that is worth a drive-by on the way to your brunch on Ossington or trip to Casa Loma’s haunted house.
