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Photograph by Paul Myers
Under the glaring eye of a rodent-monster, Chuck Sabes makes his way past the entrance to his family's haunted tunnel and house, which will be open to the public this Halloween.
Family extends haunts, warmth to community during Halloween
By Oakley Brooks
Strange things are happening around the Sabes house on Miljevich Drive these days. A tree with a face on it recently appeared in the front garden. Then someone dropped off a freakish-looking rodent that's straight out of The Princess Bride.
From within the garage, neighbors can hear hammering and sawing deep into the night. When there's some daylight, they raise an eyebrow at tombstones surrounded by cargo netting, er, leaves on the front lawn.
In the halls of Redwood Middle School and Saratoga High School, the five Sabes children are being hounded: "Is it on this year?"
Halloween's around the corner and, yes, the Sabeses are putting together another house of fright.
For the third year in a row, they're converting their three-car garage into an elaborate creep show and constructing their patented monster-laden entrance tunnel out of refrigerator boxes. And come Saturday, the first of three nights the Sabes will open their haunts to the public, local school kids will flock to their house to see what Chuck, Robin and the gang have lurking in the shadows this year.
"It's always amazing," says neighbor Marsha Shain. "Whole families so look forward to it every year."
What started as a small diversion for the Sabeses' oldest daughter Ilana's birthday 10 years ago has ballooned into a full-scale community event. During last year's festivities, Chuck Sabes says kids and parents alike made 2,000 trips through the tunnel and haunted garage. The Sabeses also raised $1,800 in voluntary donations to give to the Saratoga Education Foundation and the Argonaut School Parent Teacher Association.
This year, Sabes, 47, says he's expecting the line to be five wide again outside the tunnel entrance and says he's hoping to raise another chunk of money, this year for Saratoga High School and Redwood Middle School.
Meanwhile, the Sabes family is trying to one up itself with a new and improved layout this All Hallow's Eve.
They've moved the mind-bending tunnel out of their house and into the backyard.
From the tunnel, filled with ghouls and designed to disorient, visitors will enter the four haunted rooms in the garage. Sabes says he'll keep some of the more popular aspects from last year's rooms, while throwing in some alterations as well.
"It's a secret," he says, masking his seriousness behind a smile.
The first room last fall featured a witch's lair with a cauldron full of dry ice, a two-way mirror that shifted from a reflection to a ghostly image, and Robin Sabes' mother as the chief brewer. (Sabes' parents--both annual participants in the festivities--nearly canceled an upcoming trip overseas when they realized they'd scheduled it during the haunted house sessions.)
In room two, Robin Sabes stood statuesque in a dark mask among dozens of hanging masks. Chuck says visitors in the murky room couldn't tell Robin was anything but mask until she moved.
The third room was a family TV room of the Addams family variety, with stuffed characters on a couch watching clips from 30 different horror movies. In the last room, the Sabeses strung up skeletons and a swinging bat that appeared to jump while in a strobe light.
Although the Sabeses started this year's project in early September and Chuck has recently been cutting out early from his law office in San Jose to work on it, he says the crew is always putting the finishing touches on the display just before opening time.
Last week, the garage rooms were taking shape in the form of an interconnected wooden frame. The trick, says Chuck, was to fit the rooms in while also constructing short passages between the rooms to obscure one from the next.
In building the entrance tunnel, he's had to splice 35 different-sized refrigerator boxes together.
The Sabeses had also cut out a cardboard brickhouse façade where the entrance tunnel will begin. And they constructed a Styrofoam white picket fence to surround the front lawn.
All told, Chuck reckoned last week he'd used 12 pounds of screws and a mile of packing tape. And he still had two weeks to go.
"Every year, he says it's his last," says Marcia Shain. "But it would be so sad if it was."
This year, more than any, the Sabeses think the haunted house and tunnel will be a healthy release from the real fears that have been haunting kids and parents alike in the weeks since Sept. 11.
"I think this will be more a diversion [than a reminder]," says Robin Sabes, 45. "People have been saying 'I hope you're doing the haunted house to get people's minds off what's going on.'"
Sabes says she and Chuck have taken a little extra time to keep the action tasteful this year.
And given their success in the past in putting together a warm scare for everyone, chances are kids will be looping back around for repeat runs through the tunnel and the house this year.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
