TWO Darlington families continued a friendly tradition last year which saw their homes taken over by the ghoulish of decorations - and one home covered by a giant cobweb.
The Kneebone family and Dunphy family on Cleveland Terrace, in Darlington, tried to "outdo" each other with the most daring decorations last Halloween.
And as Halloween creeps round scarily fast this year, we are taking a look back at how the families transformed their homes into evil lairs.
Speaking to The Echo last year, Stuart and Nichola Dunphy claimed to have inspired the mysterious goings-on that had kick-started the rest of the street's decorations.
The Dunphy family, who hand-carved several pumpkins as part of the decorations Picture: SARAH CALDECOTT
At the time Mr Dunphy 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."
Next door, Elena Kneebone and her children, Aron, Alba and Arya, said the competition had been a bonus after moving to the street from nearby.
The Kneebone family's giant cobweb Pictures: SARAH CALDECOTT
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.”
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.”
Have you seen any spookily decorated homes? Or perhaps you've decided to share some scare with your own this Halloween? Email Jo.Kelly@newsquest.co.uk
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