Alameda’s Gold Coast — a stately residential enclave home to more than a few “Yes on 50" signs — has been struck by a horrifying plague of ghouls, graves, and inflatable eyeballs. Even more troubling: sources say it happens every year.
The neighborhood, particularly the area around Grand and Paru streets, has been a trick-or-treating destination for decades, according to longtime residents. More recent arrivals say neighbors warned them to buy an excess of candy.
“It’s just gotten crazy,” said resident Rick Stelmach, 57, adding that he gave out about 3,800 pieces of candy last year.
Stelmach said he starts buying candy in early September so he doesn’t have to stock up all at once. He estimated he spends up to $700 on candy each year — and said it’s worth every penny.
Some neighbors reported that families from other neighborhoods, particularly in Oakland, come to the Gold Coast to trick-or-treat. Small entrepreneurs are cashing in on the rush — sausage carts and glowstick vendors set up on the corners on Halloween night, and pedicabs ferry people around the neighborhood starting in early October.
Karen Cowell, a pediatric occupational therapist, said she decorates her Grand Street home differently every year.
“A lot of times, the dolls get into it, because I think dolls are creepy,” she said. “We try to scare the adults more than the kids.”
This year’s decorations include a freestanding door and a giant Yahtzee box, along with a collection of undead dolls (some impaled on stakes). The theme is “haunted toy store.”
A few blocks away on Sherman Street, retiree Helen Molloy’s front yard is full of enormous eyeballs.
“About five years ago, I got sick of the whole cemetery thing,” she explained. She started with four inflatable eyeballs — now there are 20.
Molloy, who has been in her home for 22 years, said Halloween is her favorite holiday. Inside, a living hand ran around the floor, and Roombas outfitted with witches’ brooms patrolled the living room. A “Halloween village” reminiscent of a birth-of-Christ diorama decorates a side table.
And then there are the laundry baskets full of candy, pencils, chips, and cookies, which Molloy bags up in about 2,000 translucent plastic gloves.
Across the street, Ryan Anson is bracing for his first Alameda Halloween. He and his wife moved to the island about a year ago.
“Our friends told us, ‘If you’re not sold on the house, come by on Halloween and you will be,’” Anson recalled. “And we were.”
The friends in question decorate their lawn with a skeleton parade led by a horse-drawn carriage.
“It’s really cool to see people go all out,” he said.
His neighbor Simon Carless, a video game consultant, is debuting some inflatable tentacles on the side of his house this year.
“We feel a little pressure to step up,” said Carless, who moved to one of the neighborhood’s spookiest intersections earlier this year. So in addition to candy, he’ll be giving out “trick or trade” packs of Pokémon cards. As we spoke, a preoccupied expression crossed Carless’s face.
“Did I buy one or two 15-pound bags of lollipops?” he wondered aloud.
Melissa Nava-Leyva, 36, said families with kids frequently come from other cities, particularly nearby Oakland, because Alameda is safe and flat —all the better for getting around with young kids. The Alameda East End native said the Gold Coast’s grand homes have always been known for extravagant Halloween decorations. It helps that many of the residents give out full-sized candy bars. But the neighborhood’s Halloween scene has grown even more lively in recent years.
Hot dog vendors have appeared on street corners in the past three years, she said, and houses began playing music roughly five years ago. On Friday, a home on the corner of San Antonio and Morton streets even had a live band of seven children singing and playing drums, bass, keyboard, and guitar.
Longtime homeowner William “Wooly” Wolverton, who has occupied a home on the corner of San Antonio Avenue and Sherman Street since 1982, estimates he and his family hand out 5,700 pieces of candy to 2,500 kids every Halloween at a cost of between $500 and $600.
“This house is one of the most popular,” Wolverton said, sitting in his living room, away from the din of shrieking children outside.
He began decorating his house for Halloween around 2010, when his first grandchild, Sophia, was born. At 82 years old, his son-in-law, Kirk Crenshaw, 57, helps set up the decor now, but the whole month of October remains a delight for Wolverton and the children who walk past his house to and from the nearby Franklin Elementary School.
“The 3-, 4-, 5-year-olds, at first they’re terrified, but then they’re running up, touching everything, complaining because something’s not working,” he said, chuckling.
As locals warned, outsiders visiting for Halloween were not hard to find.
Sarah Riley, 40, her friend Heather Bruce, 39, and her 3-year-old daughter Sarah Theard came from San Francisco to Alameda because it’s a better trick-or-treating experience than in San Francisco. Riley joined Bruce to trick-or-treat as a group with Theard.
“It’s way nicer than the Tenderloin,” she said. “You don’t have to step over a bunch of people.”