Every October, the owners of an 1898 house on Spring Street in downtown Herndon fill their front yard with skeletons, tombstones and a leprechaun with glowing yellow eyes. They call it the Historic Herndon Halloween House, and they have been building it since 2005.
We stopped by this month, met the owners and filmed the display for Instagram.
Only two or three trick-or-treaters came the first year
Colleen Delawder and Bob Mathews bought the house in 2005. That first Halloween they put out a few decorations, and only two or three trick-or-treaters came to the door, even though the neighborhood had plenty of kids. So the next year they added more decorations and lights to bring families down Spring Street.
It worked. According to a 2011 Patch profile by Chuck Mauro, a former president of the Herndon Historical Society, 15 visitors came in 2006 and 40 in 2007. By 2011, as many as 250 children a year came by.
Colleen designs the scenes, and Bob builds them, starting with the gravestones in the front yard that Patch described in 2011. Every fall he hauls the decorations down from the garage attic, Connection Newspapers reported in 2020.
The house dates to 1898
Mauro’s history of the property says it began in 1898 as a one-story, one-room building. A second story went on in 1910, and the house grew again with enlargements in 1925, 1930 and 1948. Bob and Nancy Burk bought it in 1976, restored it and applied to have it added to the Town’s historic registry.
The 2026 theme is Oddities
Colleen and Bob change the theme every year. In 2020 they built the display around pirate skeletons, and a crew of them still mans a ship’s wheel in this year’s yard.
This year’s theme is “Oddities.” One highlight is Roy’s Antique “Odds” & Ends Shop, a scene the owners built to honor the late father of one of them, filled with some of his favorite collectibles, according to Visit Fairfax.
Around the shop you will find more than 50 skeletons, a deathbed, all kinds of oddities and a graveyard with headstones for Papa Smurf and the Grinch. On the porch, a leprechaun with glowing yellow eyes sits beside a white Christmas tree, under a neon sign with the house’s name.
A signpost in the yard has arrows to Sleepy Hollow, New York (237 miles), Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, Hell for Certain, Kentucky, and dozens of other places with frightful names.
Kids can hunt for the hidden figures
The owners tuck small hide-and-seek figures around the display for kids to find. Visit Fairfax reports that they move a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man to a new spot every day, and the owners post sneak peeks of its hiding spots on their Facebook page, along with stories about Roy.
Go before sunset, then stay for the lights
The owners suggest arriving in the early evening, before the sun goes down, since some details show up better in daylight. Then grab dinner in downtown Herndon and come back after dark, when the purple porch lights and the neon sign come on. Check the Facebook page before you go for updates.
The display is a family’s front yard on a residential street, so please be good neighbors. Park in a legal spot, don’t block anyone’s driveway and keep the street clear for traffic.
Know another house in Reston or Herndon that goes all out for Halloween? Tell us about it, and we may come film it next.
See something missing or wrong? Email us at [email protected] and we will check it and update the post.
