Haunted house opens at sunset on Halloween

On a 26-acre cattle farm the Butler family dusts off coffins, skeletons and body part props that have been put away since last Halloween. Around town they are known for hosting an elaborate haunted house with themes that make big productions like Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights seem like kids' stuff.

This year Richard Butler and sister Diana Owen combined their ideas to create a haunted house theme of bedtime stories gone amuck.

The haunted house called "Deadtime Stories: A Nightmare on Swallow Avenue" is open to the public free of charge on Halloween starting at sunset at Owen's home in Sebring.

For the past 10 years the family has been building the haunted house. Each year they try and top the previous year's theme by elaborating on the ambiance of horror and adding more rooms of terror.

Their first haunted house was more like a tepee, said Danyale Goss, Owen's daughter.

Butler knew he could do better so he began brainstorming ideas and as a family they vote on themes. Last year it was "Dr. Slaughter's Hospital," where Butler, 46, played a demented doctor. This year he will be a crazed butcher. Goss, 21, plans on dressing up as a dead version of Ragedy Ann-Tragedy Anne.

The haunted house is being built on the family's ranch in Avon Park. Once built, they will transfer it to Owen's home in Sebring where it took place last year.

The family moved the haunted house from Avon Park to Sebring because not enough people were attending.

"There wasn't a lot of support for Halloween around here," Butler said, "Besides, Main Street people are turning off their lights."

On the front lawn of Butler's home the black tarp wall was propped as he prepped a test run of two rooms, the kitchen and bathroom. In the kitchen a series of plastic knives, some with hook tips and jagged edges, were hanging over the counter. The table below it will be his Halloween character's work bench.

"I'm going to be butchering here," Butler said in the spirit of spooking the visitors to come.

The kitchen freezer door, held open by a skeleton, had frozen barbecue brains and limbs in meat packaged containers. This year he wants to make a hallway of dangling gory props.

"We really want people to get into the spirit of Halloween," Butler said. Halloween is second only to Christmas as the family's favorite holiday. And 19 family and friends are volunteering to give trick-or-treaters a fun scare.

Goss is helping her uncle, Butler, set up the props. And she has quite a collection of dolls with spinning heads, ghouls and bats.

"Our bats look like dead versions of the bats in Wizard of Oz," Goss said.

Where to go

The free haunted house "Deadtime Stories: A Nightmare on Swallow Avenue" will open on Oct. 31 at sunset until "people stop coming".

Location: 225 Swallow Ave. Sebring, FL 33870