A motley crew of Halloween enthusiasts, horror-film professionals and home decorating aficionados have created a club just for Northeast Ohioans who live for the spooky season – and thousands of people have joined.
The Cleveland Haunt Club offers year-round activities and events to promote, educate and support amateur and professional haunters. Almost 34,000 people follow its Facebook page.
The club’s founder and president, Jeff Hartz, said he started the Cleveland Haunt Club based on his experience living in Detroit and participating in the Motor City Haunt Club.
“I really liked what I saw there,” he said. “I told them I’m going to steal everything you guys are doing here and take it back to Cleveland. And they’re like, that’s great, and we actually did. And it’s become a very successful group.”
What we do in the shadows
The Cleveland Haunt Club meets about once a month all over Northeast Ohio. Meetings often feature talks and demonstrations from industry professionals like authors, set builders or haunted house owners. The organization regularly hosts outings for members, like a recent trip to the Mansfield Reformatory.
The club’s annual Haunted Garage Sale attracts thousands of people and has outgrown its locations three times. The sale features nearly 150 professional Halloween vendors selling props and display items. Around 15,000 people attended the event this year at the Ross Expo Center in Lorain.
The organization supports St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital through the “Skeletons for St. Jude” national fundraising effort – in 2024, it was the largest fundraising group in the country for St. Jude.
Membership in the Cleveland Haunt Club costs $20 per year. Paid membership is not required to attend meetings, said Hartz. “It just helps us do more things for our members, you know. We can put on movie nights, ghost tours. A lot of these things you have to prepay to get into, so this way we have the leverage that we can do that. We encourage people to do the membership, but it’s not mandatory.”
Christine Kiessling, vice president and co-founder of the Cleveland Haunt Club, said the best thing about the group is bringing people together.
“We’ve got everybody, from all walks of life,” Kiessling said. “I’m a bank teller. We’ve got teachers, actors, makeup artists, all sorts of people.”
The ‘Royal Scare’ in North Royalton
Paul Tylicki joined the club in 2017. He has been creating home Halloween displays for over 25 years, first in Garfield Heights and now at his home in North Royalton. (He’s at 12043 Padua Drive, better known during Halloween season as the “Royal Scare.”) Tylicki said he was overwhelmed by the work and size of the display and temporarily quit in 2020.
“I was kind of worried that all my best Halloweens were behind me. Then I started having grandkids, and my daughters kind of guilted me into the fact that my grandkids would never be able to experience my home haunt.”
Tylicki returned to building the “Royal Scare” in 2024. This year’s display is 1800s-themed, with scenes featuring historical and literary figures including Edgar Allen Poe and Jack the Ripper.
“I’m more into the art fact … rather than, you know, trying to scare people,” said Tylicki. “You know how they have all those Norman Rockwell pictures or paintings, and you look at them and think, ‘Wow, I wish I could just climb into that and be part of that painting?’ That’s how I feel about my home haunt.”
“It’s a work of art that you can actually walk into and be part of,” he said.
Tylicki has been able to use the Cleveland Haunt Club for networking opportunities to help bring traffic to his home. “I wasn’t very computer-savvy or anything like that, to promote myself. So the Haunt Club was a huge way to promote my home.”
A 13-foot Lego skeleton in Olmsted Falls
Member Alan Perkins’ home at 7569 River Road in Olmsted Falls has gone viral on social media for his display featuring a 13-foot Lego skeleton. Perkins has presented at several Cleveland Haunt Club meetings teaching attendees some of the skills needed to build their own large-scale Halloween displays.
“I think the best thing that I get out of the Haunt Club is just insight from other people and shared experiences,” he said. “[Presenters] can show the tips and tricks of how you can set up something in your own home on a window or a site display, and that information is something that used to be very hard to glean. When people are willing to share experiences and skill sets, especially in a club-type format like this, that’s helpful.”
Pro Tip: Frightmaps.com is a free app that maps Halloween home displays and other haunted attractions in your area. Search for this year’s Cleveland Haunt Guide to find Halloween homes near you
