Allenstown display raising money for charity set alight on Halloween night
An Allenstown family who decorate their front garden every Halloween with handmade displays to raise money for charity made a devastating discovery this year.
Raising money for the Irish Heart Foundation this year, the Herward family have been turning their front lawn into a spooky spectacle for the last six years so the public can enjoy their efforts and donate to their chosen charity. What started as a project over COVID has turned into a well-loved tradition enjoyed by the surrounding community.
This year, on the 30th October, the road that the family resides on was hit with fireworks being thrown into gardens and directly at houses, but Jennifer Herward went out to check their decorations and luckily, no displays had been damaged.
Halloween night came around and the family had a small gathering at the home. When guests began to leave around 12:30am, the family noticed smoke coming from the front of the hedge in their garden.
When they walked around to see where the smoke was coming from, the family soon realised that someone had set fire to one of their Halloween displays, leaving it up in flames.
The display featured a cast iron bed frame, a bed and some wooden palettes underneath, holding a family of 'skeletons', which had been used in previous years for photograph opportunities.
Jennifer said: "Luckily, there wasn't much wind so the hedge didn't catch fire, but we know it wasn't done by fireworks. All fireworks on the road stopped at around 9:30pm that night. Someone purposely came along and set fire to the display, which was disappointing because it is one of our first and most loved displays for photographs.
Making the best out of a bad situation, Jennifer continued: "We made do of it the next morning and added an 'investigator' character in front of the bed and some caution tape so it looked like a crime scene. We wanted to show that whoever did this hadn't done anything that we couldn't work with.
"We did spend the rest of the night awake as we were afraid that whoever did it could return and do more damage. We are not too sure what we want to do for next year, we don't want to stop as we are just trying to raise money for charity.
"We take money out of our own pockets and use what we have available to us to create everything we have on display, adding new displays each year and spending hours doing so. Luckily, whoever did it didn't damage our donation box or any of our new displays."
On the bright side, the family have had an amazing response to their efforts this year, with their target of raising €500 reaching over the €2,000 mark for the Irish Heart Foundation.