Halloween in Australia often just involves sending the kids out with a plastic bag going house to house trick or treating, but one Blaxland resident has taken it to a whole new level.
Michael Pinkus' yard is like walking onto the set of a horror movie.
There are numerous grave stones, including one to dearly departed Harry Potter, big spiders and webs, and a skeleton called Charlie who stirs a cauldron, while an eerie mist spreads across the yard.
Halloween falls on Friday this year, and dates back to the Celtic farming festival Samhain. As the crops died at the end of the harvest season, farmers believed there was a day when spirits would rise from their graves. During Samhain, people would dress in disguise to ward off the spirits, and hope their land would survive through the winter. Then in the eighth century, Christians sought to transform the pagan holiday and November 1 was declared the feast of All Saints' Day, the night before becoming known as All Hollow's Eve. Modern Halloween traditions and folklore first came to America in the 19th century with the influx of Irish immigrants.
Mr Pinkus decided last year to get into the spirit of Halloween when his 16-year-old niece Teisha, who is currently living with Mr Pinkus and his wife Barbara, expressed an interest in it. He thought it would be a good "uncle and niece team-building exercise".
He gained inspiration from thorough internet research, and four months ago set about creating a ghoulish backyard. He made the gravestones from foam he sourced from his job as a storeman at a pharmaceutical supplier in Greystanes, painting and engraving names on them.
Charlie he built from scratch, buying a medical skeleton through Gumtree, turning a flower pot from Bunnings into a cauldron and spraying plumbers' foam around the base to create the burning coals. To get the scythe to rotate he used a wiper blade motor.
This is Mr Pinkus' first Halloween build, and he's planning a bigger and better one next year.
It isn't the first time he's gone all out and created another world.
Last year he bought his family surprise tickets to a Michael Buble concert, but unfortunately his wife had been ill just before the concert, so although she attended, she wasn't able to dance and enjoy it properly.
So Mr Pinkus at a later date created his own dance party in their house, complete with mirror ball, decorations and smoke machine, and he dressed up in a fancy suit and top hat.
"It's all about having fun and having an alter ego," he said.
His yard has already been attracting attention people walk by on the street and take a look, and from the nearby train line he's seen hands and faces pressed to carriage windows as trains rocket by. Some new neighbours from America remarked his set-up was even better than they'd seen in the States.
