Jaxson Crutchfield can’t walk through his family’s front yard without setting something off. Smoke rolls out of one display. A figure in another starts talking. “You have to see this,” the 11-year-old says, already heading to the next scene.
The monsters are his work.
“He’s my builder,” said his mother, Michelle Hazelett. “So like all the guys you see in the yard, he’s the one that engineered them all.”
Every year Hazelett, Jaxson’s father, Steven Crutchfield, and Jaxson turn their home at 8016 S. 87th Ave. in Justice into a walk-through haunt that anyone can visit for free. They add something new each year, and Jaxson decides where it goes. Not everything is meant to scare: one display holds a ring toss, where children throw rings onto old pop bottles.
The haunt started with conversations in school hallways. Hazelett has worked for District 109 for almost 20 years, first as a lunchroom server, then as a custodian, and now in the warehouse, where she delivers supplies from school to school. She has worked in several buildings and knows children from the Bridgeview and Justice area. Along the way, she said, she heard students talk about weekend trips to the pumpkin farm, and heard other students say their families could not afford it.
“I found out that many of my students’ families couldn’t afford Halloween fun, so my family decided to do something to share our Halloween fun with our community and students,” Hazelett said.
When she told her son, she said, he answered, “Well, Mommy, we could have somewhere the kids can come and have fun for free.”
The family opened the haunt in 2020. Their first animatronic, a figure named Bubba, arrived in 2018 and still stands in the yard. The collection grows mostly through Jaxson’s Christmas lists.
“Every year for Christmas, these are the things he asked for,” Hazelett said. “These are his toys.”
The family starts buying in August and begins setting up scene by scene around the first week of September. Setup takes about a month, and the haunt usually opens Oct. 1, weather permitting.
On weeknights, only the front display is lit. Hazelett said that gives children who are frightened of the costumed characters a chance to see the haunt calmly before they walk through it. On Friday and Saturday nights, the full walk-through runs from dusk until 10 p.m., and on Sunday until 9 p.m.
Costumed actors work the scenes. Neighbors dress up and help, and so does Jaxson’s friend Graysen Weimer. A walk-through usually takes 10 to 15 minutes, the family said, though some children stay much longer.
Hazelett said she designed the layout with children in mind, leaving open areas where kids can run and roping off spots where they shouldn’t.
“I know kids I work at a school, so I know that you’re gonna have running around and dancing and going crazy,” she said.
The crowds have grown big enough to need traffic control. The family said about 1,000 people came last year, and they expect more this Halloween. The street has no turnaround, and drivers trying to turn around among crowds of children create problems, Hazelett said.
At its Sept. 28 meeting, the Justice Village Board approved Crutchfield’s request to post “Local Traffic Only” signs, at his own expense, on 87th Avenue south of 80th Street. The approval also lets volunteers in yellow or lime green safety vests direct traffic with flashlights, only on Oct. 31 and only from 1 to 6 p.m. The family said a similar setup last year, with village barricades, kept traffic moving.
Hazelett grew up in Justice, lived downtown for a while and moved back in 2015. The family has lived in the house since then.
Asked what he would tell someone who has never visited, Jaxson kept it simple: “So they can have fun and have a nice day.”
His mother put it this way: “I would say that it’s something very stress-free where you’re not worrying about how much money you’re spending for the day to have your kids come and enjoy something.”
For information on other home haunts in the area, visit ChicagoHauntBuilders.org.
