Nightmare Before Christmas and a pirate ship: Families decorate Halloween homes

Pumpkins, skeletons and ghosts adorned homes across the UK for Halloween this year, with some families working for “months” to kit out their homes in spooky decor.

One family in Gillingham, Kent, opted for a Nightmare Before Christmas-themed Halloween display, including handmade and 3D-printed characters from the Tim Burton film.

Lavinia Hedges puts the finishing touches to a Nightmare Before Christmas-themed Halloween display, which raises funds for the My Shining Star charity, at her home in Gillingham, Kent (Gareth Fuller/PA)PA Wire/PA Images - Gareth Fuller

Daughter Lavinia Hedges, 27, told the PA news agency: “There’s always music playing. We’ve got some smoke machine effects. We’ve also got, which is new this year, a scent, so you’ll smell like some pumpkins. It’s just really magical.

“We’ve been working on it for months and months, just to get it all prepared and then to set up.

A house decorated with a Nightmare Before Christmas-themed Halloween display (Gareth Fuller/PA)PA Wire/PA Images - Gareth Fuller

Ms Hedges said: “It’s probably taken us around four or five days to properly set it all up, and we’ve been out there until like two o’clock in the morning just to get it done.”

She added that the house decorations – led by mum Nicola – “bring the community together” as people come to see the house as a family tradition.

Freddy, 9, at his home in Woodbridge, Suffolk which has been decorated by dad Lorrie Thackeray for Halloween (Joe Giddens/PA)PA Wire/PA Images - Joe Giddens

The family uses the Halloween home to raise money for local charity My Shining Star charity.

A body in a bath and fake blood dripping from the walls can be found at a home dubbed “Suffolk’s Scariest House” in Woodbridge.

Darcy, 9, at her home in Woodbridge, Suffolk which has been decorated by dad Lorrie Thackeray (Joe Giddens/PA)PA Wire/PA Images - Joe Giddens

Lorrie Thackeray, 31, told PA that each room of the house is decorated differently, explaining: “The living room looks like a creepy haunted house, the bathroom is a massacre and I’d say the kitchen is like a zombie outbreak.”

The peer support worker explained that people are led through the house in groups of six before being brought into the garden where they will be chased with a chainsaw.

A house decorated for Halloween on Elgin Crescent in Notting Hill, west London (Ben Whitley/PA)PA Wire/PA Images - Ben Whitley

A house decorated for Halloween on Elgin Crescent in Notting Hill (Ben Whitley/PA)PA Wire/PA Images - Ben Whitley

The dad has been decorating the house for Halloween for 10 years and is expecting more than 200 visitors to the house this year.

Several houses went all out on Elgin Crescent in Notting Hill, west London, ready to welcome trick-or-treaters on All Hallows’ Eve.

A house decorated with a pirate-themed Halloween display in Mierscourt Road in Rainham, Kent (Gareth Fuller/PA)PA Wire/PA Images - Gareth Fuller

One house features a large black skeleton shrouded in a cloak standing above several gravestones, while another is adorned with large skulls surrounded by autumn leaves.

On Mierscourt Road in Rainham, Kent, one house went all out with a pirate-themed display, with a large ship covered in pirate flags and skulls sitting in the front garden.

Lights illuminate the ruins of Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire to mark Halloween (Danny Lawson/PA)PA Wire/PA Images - Danny Lawson

Meanwhile, lights illuminate the ruins of Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire to mark Halloween.

Visitors to the nightly display at the English Heritage property, which was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, can also experience the world of Victorian gothic with a production of If These Stones Could Talk from the Time Will Tell theatre group.