Bright, flashing lights and holiday music are usually reserved for the Christmas season, but one home at 7321 Butterscotch Road in northern Eden Prairie brings the festivities to Halloween.
Lights on Butterscotch Road is decked out with more than 18,000 lights and decorated with spiders on the house’s front and a graveyard in the front yard, complete with characters from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” A giant witch sits on the other side of the yard, and a projection of different music videos — which the lights are programmed to synchronize with — plays on the garage.
Everything – aside from the “Nightmare Before Christmas” characters – is made of lights.
Russ Stebner puts on the light show every year for Halloween and Christmas. This year is the ninth season he’s done the light show for both holidays.
“Every year it just grows a little bit more,” Stebner said. “More props, more lights, more everything.”
The first year Stebner decorated for Halloween, he mostly used decorations from Home Depot but bought one light-up spider he could control himself. From there, the festivities grew.
Stebner programs the lights to flash in sequence with different songs, he said. There are 17 songs to choose from this Halloween, including “Ghostbusters,” “Defying Gravity” and “This Is Halloween.”
The first song he programmed for the show was “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, Stebner said. To add music and synchronized lights to the show, he uses software called xLights, where users can find pre-made sequences or create their own.
Stebner said he has done a bit of both.
Visitors can select which song they want to hear by scanning a QR code outside or visiting the light show’s website, Stebner said. Otherwise, the songs play in their programmed order.
Onlookers can listen to the music by tuning their car radio to 87.9 FM or by downloading an app called Pulsemesh, Stebner said.
Stebner said that last Halloween season, people made more than 400 song requests, which does not account for any visitors who sat and listened without making requests.
He said people like to ask him what his neighbors across the street think of his light show. Lucky for him, they love it.
“They’re like my biggest fans,” Stebner said. The family’s kids occasionally request songs to add to the set list, most recently “Oogie Boogie’s Song” from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
“When they come home from dance in the evenings and stuff like that, they usually end up making their parents stay in the driveway and watch a few songs,” Stebner said.
Stebner said if you want to come see the light show, it’s best to come before Halloween because it tends to get very busy, especially during peak trick-or-treating time.
