Halloween house with tentacles draws in thousands of fans

A popular Halloween house is returning for its third year as a trick or treat attraction for local kids in Markham, Ontario.

Yahoo Canada spoke to the owner and decorator Jimmy Cheung to learn more about his otherworldly attraction.

Video by Shibani Gokhale

Video Transcript

[HALLOWEEN MUSIC]

JIMMY CHEUNG: I actually got a 30-foot inflatable Stay Puft Marshmallow Man for my wedding originally. My wife was like, "When are we going to use it again?" I'm like, "That's the great thing. Every year!" And we did it for Halloween, and the first year, people were just blown away by it.

We started off with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and then I stumbled upon these 20-foot-tall tentacles. I got three of them, so 6o-feet tentacles total. And I was all like, I should probably get them, you know? And so I did.

Every year, except for the year that my son was born, because he was actually born on Halloween. So then I was busy. Sorry, guys.

The first year we put up the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, a bunch of people came over and thanked me, because they said in our area they hadn't seen kids in years, actually. Then all of a sudden, because we had the Stay Puft up and we put it on social media, a bunch of kids showed up. And then last year when we put up the tentacles, literally a thousand kids showed up. It was just-- we live in laneway, and the lineup just went all the way around the block. And people actually told me they had to park 20 minutes away and walk over just to get to us.

It's a time of year when basically all the adults, no matter how old they are, they get to be a kid again. Even just for a day. And a lot of my life's decisions are based off of whether or not eight-year-old me would be proud of me.

--the community dads to come by too, because it takes a minimum of nine people to lift up the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, actually. There's a bunch of ropes, you just got to pull them up, basically.

The elements. Mother nature sure has high winds. In fact, last night, if the winds are over 40, that's going to be a pickle. The top tentacle actually went down.

People constantly stop by in front of our house and thank her when I'm not around, or thank us when I am, and just tell us how thankful they are for having such elaborate decorations around for their kids, and their kids are just always getting ecstatic about it. And the adults are getting ecstatic about it, too.

Drop by my house, you guys! I love strangers. First 300 kids will get full-sized chocolate bars.