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Keepers: Felicia Stollard’s Haunted Holdings
by Stacey Paretti Rase
photography by Stephen Faure
“My biggest heartbreak in life was when I was 13 and my mother told me that I was too old to go trick-or-treating,” laughs Folsom’s Felicia Stollard. Lucky for other Halloween fanatics, Felicia turned that heartbreak into a hearty obsession with all things ghoulish and frightful. “Anything related to Halloween, I’ll buy,” she says. “It’s like an illness!”
Her collection of items is certainly impressive. By early October, the winding driveway that leads to the Stollard home is lined with devilish signs warning of “impending danger ahead.” Skeletons, vampires and mummies welcome visitors to the front stoop and spiders perch ominously overhead. Ghosts peek through the curtains, making one unsure about venturing inside. But, once beyond the door, visitors are treated to a fantastic Halloween wonderland, featuring a complete miniature village display constructed of hand-painted ceramic buildings and accessories.
The set is crafted by Department 56, a company most widely known for its popular lighted Christmas villages. Felicia began collecting 
the Halloween pieces about seven years ago and has been adding to the village landscape every year since. Set up on tables throughout the home’s living room, the display offers imaginative scenes that are crafted in minute detail. Windows of the village’s buildings flash with “lightening” and sounds of howls and screeches play in the background. Much of the display contains motorized parts, such as the haunted carousel carrying children in their costumes or the tilt-o-whirl featuring spinning pumpkins. Both rides are in a section of the village’s “fun park.” Viewing every aspect of the village can take hours if you stop to appreciate the small nuances of the set-up. Most of the buildings are titled with clever names, such as the “Black Cat Diner” and the “Dead End Motel.” It takes Felicia days to assemble the entire display, but she is helped by her sons Whitney, Alexander and Jackson. “She makes us unpack all the boxes!” exclaims Jackson.
The set-up of the village collection is matched only by the organization involved in planning for the Stollard family’s annual haunted house held on a Saturday in October. “The LSU football schedule dictates when we hold the haunted house!” says Felicia. The frightening set-up has become quite a popular event for the Stollard boys and their friends. It all began as a simple haunted walk pathway, but soon expanded to occupy the space inside the family’s large dog kennel, outfitted with black Visqueen in the event of rain. The show finally landed in the family’s guest house, to accommodate the 100-plus visitors who tour the spooky space.
“[My husband] David sets up everything for the haunted house. Last year, he and two friends started pretty late and were forced to stay up until about one o’clock in the morning to get it all finished,” Felicia recounts. “David heard one kid say to another after going through the haunted house, ‘That wasn’t so scary!’, so he decided that he’s going to take a whole week to get it put together this year!”
Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
