Spooky or what? Spaceship crash lands in East Ham

The home owners, Gordon Haskins and Dolores Maisonneuve, have been ambitiously decorating their house in Rancliffe Road for Halloween ever since they moved to the area from Canada twelve years ago.

Dolores said: “When we first moved to East Ham we didn’t really think anyone did Halloween here. I asked around, ‘Do kids do trick or treating here?’ and they said that they did so I went out and got some sweets and I bought a skeleton and a witches hat.

“There was this one little witch girl who knocked on the door and she said ‘Wow, you guys really do Halloween, don’t you?’ and I thought, you think this is good? You haven’t seen anything yet.”

In their first year, they received around 30 local children to their spooky abode and now they estimate that around 200 trick or treaters visit.

Last year, Dolores created a giant spider’s web but she decided to make a departure from tradition this year after watching an alien film on TV.

The decorations are the product of two day’s preparation and three hours installation, and the couple recruit neighbours to be helpers.

Gordon, a banker in the City, put the finishing touches on the spaceship on Sunday night, ready for trick or treaters on Monday.

Dolores, who is the creative director of Red Door Studios, an arts space in East Ham, said: “The first year that we came here, we had some eggs thrown at our house and we thought we needed to do something to address that.

“Me and my husband like to think that we’re casting a spell over the kids in the area because now the kids know it as the Halloween house and some of them have been coming here for ten years. It’s amazing to think that a child who came to our house when they were 10 is now 20.

“But the neighbours are great at helping out and, when they see the kids’ reaction, I think they understand why we do it. I just wanted to do something nice for the kids in the neighbourhood and I like that we’ve given them those memories.”