As much as Halloween is often a holiday catered toward children trick-or-treating in elaborate costumes, many major forms of entertainment are often too scary for the kids, and even for some adults, to enjoy.
Santa Clarita residents are actively changing that narrative, creating family-friendly and inclusive events for people of all ages.
Bar Harbor Scares
Going on six years of Bar Harbor Scares, Alan Mah Baxter has taken his love for Halloween into a month-long annual celebration he can enjoy with his wife, Elizabeth, and daughter Grace, 11.
“It’s for the whole family. Grownups come here and they get scared. I had one person come and say that she did Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios and she’s like, ‘I don’t know, something about your maze startled me several times.’ One thing that we started this year is we partnered with a local organization called Progressive Steps, and they have their social language group,” Baxter said. “They came here — basically certain scenarios can be overwhelming if there’s large crowds. I can customize the walkthrough and can tone down how scary it is.”
Baxter can control the animatronics, making kids’ experiences in the walkthrough enjoyable, especially if it’s their first time.
“We want to give more access to other kids who wouldn’t necessarily get these opportunities. We did the maze on a Sunday as a private event that we did with Progressive Steps. One thing that I did that night, that I’ve been doing with other children, and I’ve been enjoying it, is giving them a personalized walkthrough if it’s not too crowded. I’m like their guide, and I let some of the kids actually press the buttons on the remote, because they’re really apprehensive, and that has been awesome,” Baxter said. “We can pretty much go in and say, ‘Do you want ambience and no animatronics? What’s your comfort level?’”
Having had hundreds of people stop by and experience the haunt, Baxter also had challenges with the Santa Ana winds that took place mid-October.
“For any person that does a home haunt, when there are 55-mile-an-hour winds, you can only do so much. It’s hard when you come out in the morning and [your tunnel] is all knocked open and ripped out. The tunnel was completely ripped out, broken apart, and I was putting it back together from scratch in one day,” Baxter said.
Despite the inevitable challenges, Baxter is pleased with the results and the overall setup and duration of the haunt.
“We’re at a point where you can only grow so much, because if you lengthen the walkthrough maze, then it gets to the point where it’s too scary for the kids. A minute-and-a-half is good for them, because anything beyond that is going to be too much,” Baxter said. “Our whole purpose is giving kids their first walkthrough. The first thing we tested out this year was having a little show moment at the beginning … where my daughter would dress up as a witch. I think it worked out great because people loved it. I think they felt more comfortable going in knowing that I was ushering them in, and my daughter was a very friendly face.”
Burroughs Place Cemetery
In Stevenson Ranch, it’s hard to miss Ryan Markley’s Burroughs Place Cemetery, stationed right at their property on Burroughs Place.
Along with Markley’s wife, Christie, the couple have been putting on their extensive haunt to not only bring Halloween fun to their two kids, Mia, 12, and Jameson, 8, but also for the Santa Clarita community.
From a graveyard with animatronics to provide “concentrated scares,” to a Star Wars and dad-joke-inspired “Force Perspective Hallway,” to a 25-foot inflatable Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from “Ghostbusters,” the main theme of this year’s extended and elaborate haunt is DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon.”
“We are doing ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ because I can still get my 12-year-old to wear a onesie, and I can also get my special needs 8-year-old to wear it, too. So we bought a new dragon coming out of the firehouse. Our first animatronic we ever had was a dragon, and last year when I was setting him up, he face planted. So we replaced him,” Markley said.
Markley, who is a set dresser for film and television, has spent nearly a month turning his lawn into skeletons, bats and any figure that is Halloween-related.
“We started kind of in COVID. I loved being a set dresser, and when that work went away, I needed a creative outlet. With Jameson, he’s got CHARGE syndrome. One of the things that comes along with that is chronic lung disease, and we took it very seriously. We shut the doors, but we still wanted to socialize with people. We thought doing an epic haunt would bring people at our door, but just outside at a distance,” Markley said. “It’s become a neighborhood rallying place. I have a cotton candy machine for the kids, and we give out treats mostly on the weekends. We’ll do candy and non-candy. Jameson is fed by a [gastrostomy tube], so we always do non-edible treats for other kids.”
Open nightly throughout the month of October, the Markleys have focused on adding additional elements this year.
“We try to upgrade every year. The layout and footprint is basically the same — it’s just … more structures. We got [new 10 foot] walls. Last year we received an animatronic from a neighbor, who said the animatronic was too scary for her kids, so that was our first donation ever,” Markley said. “This year was a challenge with the heat, along with the sheer labor of putting 10-foot walls.”
Markley has always been a Halloween fanatic, channeling his ideas since he was 10.
“When I was a kid, decorations like this didn’t exist. I came from a pretty big family. When I was 10, I was left to my own devices a lot. At that age, I used to decorate our house by myself. I would get a cassette tape of haunted sounds and play it in the boombox, spiderwebs anywhere I could. I was a touring musician for 25 years, and was on the road 10 months out of the year. When I finally got a house, I really wanted to start decorating for Halloween,” Markley said.
Adding more and more each year, Markley enjoys the atmosphere the haunt has created by curating a community.
“Most of the praise I’ve gotten are from neighbors saying, ‘I moved to the suburbs for trick-or-treaters, and we didn’t have any until you started doing this.’ There was one year — I think we probably had 500 to 600. There was a point during Oct. 31, where there was a sea of 300 people moving steadily down the street. One of my neighbors came by and just said, ‘Thank you so much. This is why we moved to the suburbs,’” Markley said. “There’s cotton candy on the weekends. Bring the kids. We’d love to have you.”
Damian’s Not-So-Haunted House
For four years, Brittany Markham has been utilizing her art degree, to not only create an interactive haunt for young trick-or-treaters, called Damian’s Not-So-Haunted House, but also to raise funds for her 7-year-old son Damian’s treatment.
Through her campaign, Please Save Damian, Markham has been focused on raising $3 million to provide her son with the best care and potential treatment for any child diagnosed with ASMD (Acid Sphingomyelinase Deficiency).
With other events throughout the year, such as the Fourth of July parade and Christmas festivities, Markham and her husband, Brock, have raised close to $1.2 million in the past five years.
In fact, Markham began raising $10,000 during Halloween 2022, and raised $17,000 last year.
More growth is anticipated this year due to the funds raised from the recurring bake sale, in addition to selling custom-made shirts for the first time.
“I’m originally from Washington, I went to college in Utah, then came to CalArts for my master’s and we have stayed here ever since — we love it here. After I graduated, I went into theme park design, and I did a lot of work for Warner Bros. and then we had Damian,” Markham said. “We found out when he was a year-and-a-half that he had ASMD. It’s a rare, genetic disease. My husband and I had no idea we were carriers — that’s why it’s so rare, because both parents have to pass it on.”
After Damian’s diagnosis in early 2021, Markham took the initiative to research the condition as much as she could.
“I immediately went to research what can be done because the doctor told us when he was diagnosed that he was just going to die, and there’s nothing we could do about it. I did a lot of research on my own and found that there were a lot of developments being made to treat it. We flew out to New York and met with the expert on the disease there, and she told us about the Wilder Nation Foundation, which is the foundation we raise money for,” Markham said. “Damien’s my full-time job now, but we have been doing events ever since.”
Being told that her son wouldn’t live past 5 years old, Markham’s goal has been to stop Damian’s regression, with the ultimate goal of doing anything she can to “make him healthy.”
“We got him on two treatments. One of them is experimental — he got that treatment because of his campaign, which has seemed to have slowed down his regression by a lot, so it bought us a lot of time,” Markham said. “I am going to do as much as I can to make him healthy. Acid sphingomyelinase is an enzyme that we all have, and its purpose is to break down particular fat we all accumulate. The infusion that we do every two weeks at the Children’s Hospital is pumping him with that enzyme, and it fixes everything except for the brain. That’s really what we’re fighting now.”
The display in the front includes Markham’s Micky Pumpkin that she made in roughly two months since the haunt’s inception, in addition to a train that Markham made from scratch for Fourth of July in 2025 to use for other festivities, such as this one. Children then can walk through the Disney-themed maze, finding candy at the polka-dot garage door near the end of the haunt.
“Because I work in theme park design, I’ve got a lot of really cool friends. They do some of the animatronics for Disneyland, so they built this [stretching portrait] for me. You’ll notice that everything’s at a lower level. This was specifically built for the youngest trick-or-treaters. I feel like the kids are the ones who get the most excited about Halloween, but there’s nowhere for them to go,” Markham said. “They want to get all dressed up, but they don’t want to get scared. The whole thing is kind of like if Haunted Mansion were in a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episode.”
With the help of Minnie’s cat Figaro, Mickey making an appearance as a ghost and Pluto’s pumpkin patch, Markham looks forward to seeing the families come out to her kid-friendly haunt.
“It’s getting bigger and bigger every year, and it’s so fun. It’s so fun to create an event where the community can come together. This is really catered to young families, so it’s a great space for people to mingle with their kids and to create a community,” Markham said. “I’m so grateful. It’s such a benefit to our family — all the generosity that people give. I hope that creating events like this gives some value back. I’m grateful that I’m able to fundraise in a way that fills my cup, too.”
To donate or learn more about the campaign, visit: www.savedamian.com.
