KAILUA-KONA — From diving with tiger sharks to masterminding a spooky haunted house, there’s not much in life that Timothy Ewing fears.
He prefers being the reason behind the chills and frights people experience.
“I enjoy scaring the kids, the adults and everyone else,” Ewing said.
A resident of the Big Island for 19 years, Ewing has opened up his house on Sea View Circle for 18 of those years to the monsters, ghouls and other ghastly creatures of the island for his annual Halloween haunted house.
The haunted house features props, animatronic creatures and special effects crafted by Ewing to scare the estimated 300-500 visitors the house attracts every year.
The house is open from dusk to around 9-9:30 p.m. tonight only, Halloween night.
Halloween is Ewing’s favorite holiday, and the haunted house allows him to focus on three of his favorite things — scaring people, building new things and being creative.
“I enjoy learning new things and building new things,” Ewing said. “I’ve had to teach myself animatronics and other stuff because I don’t generally get a lot of help. And it’s much easier to get these props to do things for me then to have a bunch of people help me.”
The haunted house begins in Ewing’s front yard, or the graveyard, which is full of skeletons, coffins, and tombstones. Ewing said he makes one or two new props every year to keep the event fresh.
He also allows some of his props, such as the skeletons, to sit outdoors year-round in order to get the look required for a haunted house.
“Some of these tombstones I’ve had for 15 years,” Ewing said. “And I don’t care if they get dilapidated, because they just look like they’re falling down tombstones.”
“That guy used to have a really nice shirt,” said Ewing, pointing to one of his many skeletons.
The path through the haunted house then leads to a walkway where visitors can see an undead “aquarium” and a zombie quarantine zone, also built by Ewing.
The final section of the haunted house is an almost pitch-black maze, where volunteers are hidden in strategic places to scare anyone who walks past.
“The original maze was made out of cloth, but people who were frightened tended to go through my walls,” Ewing said. “So then I used 1/8-inch plywood, and people tended to break those down too. So now I use 1/4-inch plywood, so the walls are sturdy enough so they can’t break through my walls.”
The reward for making it through the house of horrors is, of course, the Halloween tradition of candy.
Admission to the haunted house is free, but Ewing asks each visitor to donate one nonperishable food item. The food is then donated by Ewing to The Food Basket. Ewing said he collected 126 pounds of food during last year’s haunted house, a new record.
During the offseason, Ewing enjoys indulging in another creative outlet, photography. The hobby keeps the thrills in his life going when it’s not October.
“I generally go diving once a week, and lately I go dive by the harbor because there’s tiger sharks there and I enjoy attempting to get close enough to the tiger sharks to get pictures,” Ewing said.
If Ewing is afraid of anything, he makes sure to incorporate it into the haunted house, like the centipedes crawling over the skeletons of the graveyard.
“I hate centipedes,” Ewing said. “So, I put them on the dead bodies to add to the look.”
Ewing said he begins creating the haunted house every year in September, and the result is one night of scares for people of all ages. Ewing said he wished he could have it open the entire Halloween week, but it’s too difficult with his work schedule and the schedule of his volunteers.
Ewing’s always looking for people who want to be behind-the-scenes, even if they don’t decide they want to volunteer until the night of Halloween.
“I have kids that will want to go through four, five, six times, and then I have kids who go through four, five, six times, and then they say, ‘Can I help?’ Ewing said. “Small kids who want to help, I’ll find a place for them to help.”
Ewing’s haunted house is found tonight only at 77-6518 Sea View Circle in Kailua-Kona.