In search of some wickedly good fun? Halloween house tracker in Naperville has you covered
From a yard full of ghouls and graves to a garage glowing with haunted arcade games, a stroll through Naperville is a Halloween attraction in itself.
For weeks, houses transformed for the holiday have been popping up around the city. They aren’t hard to find given that their decorations range from the simply festive to downright creepy, but if you want to see them all — or even just hit the most outlandish — one Naperville family has you covered.
Thanks to Deborah Nilles, Kevin Knoth and their daughter Megan, Naperville houses done up for Halloween are trackable with one simple click to a customized Google map. A treasure trove of local displays, the map includes more than 90 houses, each listed by address with a picture previewing the decor and sometimes a small note describing what you might find.
“NEW! Clever little scenes!” one listing reads.
“LOTS of scary animatronics,” another says.
Every house on the map is appropriately marked with a mini pumpkin graphic.
“We try to get as much information out there for people to enjoy the holiday as we can,” Nilles said.
This is the fourth year the family has curated a Halloween house map for Naperville. The process begins in late September, just as displays start coming together. To fashion a comprehensive — and accurate — inventory of the best-dressed homes in town leading up to Oct. 31, Nilles spends weeks vetting addresses before publishing the guide online.
“It takes at least 15 to 20 nights to go out and see all of the properties,” said Nilles, adding there’s more houses to check out every year.
“People send me addresses at this point. I get hundreds and hundreds of messages. I’m still getting messages, but I have to stop driving sometime. … For the first two weeks of October, I’m driving to houses every single night, from sundown until the lights go off, to make this map.”
But once the map is up, Nilles is eager to see local families respond to their recommendations.
“It’s a labor of love,” she said.
And if Halloween isn’t enough, Nilles repeats the whole process again come December, focusing on holiday light displays.
Nilles’ light tracker dates back a decade. It began with just her family’s house, when Nilles and her husband decided to start decorating as much as they could for Christmas. Their display earned a name for itself, the Believe House, and people flocked to it.
Nilles and her family had an annual tradition of driving around town in search of the best lit houses. Sometimes, though, decorations would disappear or discontinue, so Nilles set out to keep track of light displays each year, her house included.
Eventually, the operation evolved to include Halloween, after Nilles noticed how many people in Naperville “really go all out” for the holiday.
“I don’t know if it’s a Naperville-specific thing, but there’s a lot of Halloween spirit here,” she said.
For their own home, Nilles and her family leave the Halloween decorating to their neighbors, saving their efforts for the weeks-long process it takes to put together the Believe House. But until then, they’re glad to relish in — and encourage — the local Halloween spirit.
“We’ve heard from a lot of people that say it’s kind of a family tradition now to go out and see the houses,” Nilles said. “That warms our hearts. That’s exactly why we’re doing this. To help people create memories.”
The Believe House’s full list of local addresses decorated for Halloween this year can be found at https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?fbclid=IwAR2qMh1LZdBHW0KsA3q2VdZ2liPgd2p6mdaM78Ouk2QPVRq1pLABqDmxbXU&mid=1dNyL1ZWANUFOhvIPRdkyZsPFkbUwARZv&ll=41.74690190000005%2C-88.13472439999998&z=12.
