A FRIENDLY competition between neighbours to outpace each other's spooktacular Halloween decorations continued for another year of trick-or-treating today.

The Kneebone family and Dunphy family in Darlington have spent the past three years coming up with ways to "outdo" each other's goulish exterior decorations.

The impressive decorations, which range from hand-carved pumpkins, a giant cobweb complete with spiders, eerie gravestones, skeletons and lighting, have been meticulously placed in and around two adjacent homes on Cleveland Terrace.

The Northern Echo:

The Kneebone family's giant cobweb Pictures: SARAH CALDECOTT

Stuart and Nichola Dunphy, who claim to have inspired the mysterious goings-on and kick-started the rest of the street's decorations, said their offering "grew from the inside out".

Mr Dunphy, a chemical engineer, said: "It grows in scale each year. We started a little bit earlier this year, normally we start a little bit before Halloween – it takes a few days to put everything together.

"It's all inside our house as well, we have a Halloween party with lots of people round so all of the inside of the house gets decorated.

"It sort of grew from the inside of the house to the outside of the house."

The Northern Echo:

The Dunphy family, who hand-carved several pumpkins as part of the decorations

Mr Dunphy, who said his wife took the Halloween decorations very seriously, said the street was becoming more competitive each year.

He added: "Nichola takes it very seriously and it’s growing, we’re getting competitive up and down the street.

“We’ve been here a few years and it gets a little bit bigger and collect additional bits each year.

"We’ve lots of schoolkids, troops of them coming on trips to see the house, taking pictures of the pumpkins.

“It’s good fun and the kids love it."

The Northern Echo:

The Dunphy family's impressive pumpkins outside of their front door

Next door, Elena Kneebone and her children, Aron, two, Alba, 12, and four-month-old Arya, said the competition had been a bonus after moving to the street from nearby.

She said: “It is nice for the kids, to do something as a family. It doesn’t take too long to put the decorations up but it takes a long time to buy it all.”

The family were prepared with a 5kg bucket full of treats.

Ms Kneebone said: “The competition came as a bonus when we moved to the street, we were already doing it ourselves but when we moved the neighbour come out to say ‘Oh I saw your house, it’s in competition with mine’ and we joked about it.

“We’ve seen people taking pictures, people come especially in the night lots of people are usually very impressed and they ask ‘can I look around, where did you buy this’, people are really interested.”

Alba, who came up with the plan for this year's Halloween decorations, said: "It was a plan and we tweaked a couple of things, big webs and stuff like that."

She added: "It’s good seeing my plan outside and it makes me feel great because it was my plan and my ideas were used."