Family's Hallowe'en horror house

A Hallowe’en-obsessed family have taken their crusade to have the best seasonal decorations in town to new levels by flying in their new star attractions from almost 4,000 miles away.

The Charlton family, of Gallow Tree Road, Brecks, have created ten years of terror for visitors to their street by decorating their home with everything from mournful mummies, stacks of skulls, grizzly gravestones and a life-size corpse hanging from a lamppost.

Dad Glenn (53), son Dean (23) and daughter Lauren (20) fashion a macabre Mecca on All Hallow’s Eve to raise money for Sheffield’s Weston Park cancer hospital.

But efforts to top their creepy creative flair every year took a new twist when Glenn decided that they would grow their own pumpkins for this year’s Hallowe’en extravaganza...and only the best would do.

Glenn explained: “I got on the Internet and managed to order seeds that came from the world’s largest pumpkin, called the Harp pumpkin, in Ohio.

“We don’t have the same growing conditions over here so we were never going to match that one\_it weighed in at over 1,700 lbs\_—but we still ended up with quite a good crop.”

Glenn credited the efforts of his daughter, Lauren, with the pumpkins grown on his allotment for this Hallowe’en, adding: “The biggest pumpkin we came out with weighs 500 pounds and has been on a diet of ten gallons of water a day for the past ten months. It’s pretty impressive.”

Last year, the Charltons’ Hallowe’en display raised almost £500 for Weston Park Hospital in just three hours and this year they hope to raise even more when they welcome visitors and charitable donations between 4pm and 9pm on October 31.

The Charltons vowed to support the hospital’s work after family friend Alex Albiston lost his fight against the disease last year.

The straight-A Wickersley Comprehensive pupil stunned family and friends by taking exams in hospital between intensive chemotherapy treatment on his way to scoring five top A-levels last year.

But the 18-year-old was struck down by the rare bone cancer osteosarcoma for a second time on the eve of going to Cambridge University last October and died five months later, on March 13.

Paying tribute, Glenn said: “Alex was an inspiration to us all.

“He knew that he only had a short time left but he kept smiling and was always great to be around.

“If we can raise money for the hospital that cared for him so well, then that’s a great outcome of our efforts on Hallowe’en.”