Florida Homeowner Expands 5,000-Square-Foot 'Bearadise' Halloween Haunt With Salem Witch History

ORANGE PARK, Florida — What began seven years ago with a solitary pumpkin and scattered hay bales now commands nearly 5,000 square feet of paved suburban terrain.

Matt McCary, a Florida homeowner, has turned his front yard in Orange Park into an expansive, free walk-through Halloween installation dubbed "Bearadise." The project operates at the intersection of neighborhood theater, amateur engineering, and early American history. It draws roughly 250 trick-or-treaters each season. And it costs visitors nothing.

Previously operated under the moniker "Haunted Pathway," the installation once spanned roughly 4,000 square feet with distinct zones dubbed "The Boneyard," "Spider Alley," and "Witch Way." The current iteration pushes well past those boundaries. Visitors enter through a custom-built archway, navigating hundreds of feet of electrical wiring, towering skeletons, handmade gravestones, dense overhead web canopies, and automated fog machines synced to hidden audio systems.

Scale demanded manpower. McCary now mobilizes a 14-person neighborhood crew just to unload the physical set pieces, spending weeks wiring circuits and calibrating lighting sequences before gates open. To foster local buy-in, McCary hosts an annual neighborhood competition for the wittiest gravestone epitaphs, anchoring the production firmly in community hands.

From Massachusetts Matrimony to 1692 Witch Trial Archives

But Bearadise diverges sharply from conventional suburban haunts by folding clinical historical inquiry directly into its layout. McCary, who married in Salem, Massachusetts in October 2013, deliberately linked the haunt's aesthetic to the colonial witch trials that shook New England more than three centuries ago.

Educational placards embedded along the trail feature scannable QR codes. Instead of generic jump scares, the codes direct smartphones to archival records detailing the 1692 Salem proceedings—cataloging the names, legal trials, and executions of those condemned during the historic panic. The interactive element gives families and school-age visitors an unvarnished history lesson amid the fog.

To manage younger crowds, McCary powers up the ambient lighting ahead of nightfall, giving toddlers and skittish children a low-intensity daylight pass before switching to fully staged theatrical darkness.

With seasonal preparations wrapping up, McCary plans to keep the circuit running through the climax of Halloween night, maintaining the walk-through as an open public commons for the surrounding community.