CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A Portland man is giving his neighbors and the Coastal Bend a fun, spooky show.
Larry Berger has been decorating his home for Halloween and Christmas for the last 17-years.
15-year-old Reef Simmons is Berger’s neighbor. He said he remembers the days when the lights filled his home.
“Probably since I was a kid, it was just a small little thing,” Simmons said. “I didn’t think it was going to grow into what is today, but it’s just been growing steadily. Every year it has been adding more and more big skeleton or another big section of the yard.”
Berger said that he wanted to do something fun that was going to bring the community together, so he picked us his hammers and plywood and got to work.
"It kind of grew from there,” Berger said. “One of my biggest animatronics is behind me, the skeleton, which got me in the big zone, and I got another one, and another one, and then I built a big spider and that wasn’t big enough, so I had to build a bigger one. It just keeps going and going.”
Berger built more than 40% of the project by hand. He said he wanted to give in the Coastal Bend the ultimate experience.
“What can I do that is different than everyone else, something you can’t go buy at the store as well, something unique,” he said. “And so, I just kind of started to build off of build sites, and YouTube, and social media and I got ideas and it kind of grew from there.”
He said that every year he begins planning for Halloween in June all because he wants to enforce the power of community.
“This is something that I can do as an individual and I see the value in it for my company, because it works, it takes care of the community, the community takes care of you, they support you. It’s just something I wanted to do on a personal level.”
This attraction is open from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., daily until Halloween. The attraction is located at 1115 Meadowbrook Dr., Portland, TX 78374.
The attraction also has a Halloween radio show that the public can listen to, 107.9 FM. If you want to learn more about the attraction, click here.
