Homespun Horrors

SYLMAR —  For most of the year, Jay Shapiro lives the low-key, often dull life of a mechanical engineer making aircraft clamping devices. But as Halloween approaches, his Vincent Price persona takes over.

Shapiro spends months filling his simple three-bedroom home and yard with frights. In the frontyard, a witch hiding in a tree glides by to greet visitors. When they ring the doorbell, a dangerous-looking ax swings across the door, inches from the callers’ noses.

Inside, furniture trembles and drawers open suddenly. Shapiro sleeps in the “Poltergeist Room,” where a wax hand clutching a knife hangs from the ceiling.

The haunted house will be open tonight through Halloween. Proceeds from this year’s $5 admission will go to the Van Nuys-based nonprofit organization Children of the Night, which helps teenage prostitutes get off the street. Last year, about $300 was donated to the group, said its director, Lois Lee.

Shapiro, who is separated from his wife and whose teenage sons are away at college, lives alone in the house on Candlewood Drive. For many years he decorated his home for Halloween parties, but in the past few years, he has opened it to the public.

“It gives me a chance to show off,” said Shapiro, 45. “I guess I’m a closet extrovert.”

There are no high-tech, special effects in sight. Shapiro operates his devices with strings, pulleys, fishing wire and air pumps. In darkened rooms, volunteers’ hands pop out to scare people.

“My first thought was people would think this is hokey,” said Katie Amstutz, 32, a Westchester actress who served as the “haunted host” last Halloween and will volunteer again this year. “But he does a great job and really pulls it off. This is kind of the way that he shines every year.”

Earlier this week, Shapiro walked three neighborhood kids through his house as a strobe light inside a small skull flickered through the hallway. He led them to the “Exorcist Room.”

“We usually don’t go in here anymore,” Shapiro said gravely as he grasped the doorknob. “But we have to force ourselves.”

Shapiro opened the door, revealing a girl made of chicken wire and foam, wearing a wig and sitting on a bed. Shapiro hit a switch and a machine began spewing smoke across the floor. The girl’s head started spinning and the bed levitated.

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Later, Shapiro said he was disappointed that the youngsters took so much of it in stride.

“You’re supposed to be scared,” Shapiro told them.

“Oh, it’s not dark [yet],” Danielle Babarinde, 14, said to reassure him.

Although scaring jaded teens can be a challenge, Shapiro takes pride in spending only about $400 to painstakingly create his own props. He buys little motors in thrift shops and makes the decor--such as the giant plaster spider that climbs a living room wall--by hand.

“I don’t go to other haunted houses,” he said. “I try to be as original as I can.

“I don’t like gory stuff. I don’t want [visitors] to be scared out of their wits. If a kid is crying and scared, that’s not the point of the thing.”

Although there are larger, commercial haunted houses, Shapiro’s attracts hundreds because many people prefer an old-fashioned, grass-roots alternative, said Tree Washburne, a playwright and actress who volunteers at the house.

“We have enough glitz and fancy stuff,” said Washburne, 38, of Reseda. “As a kid, it would’ve inspired me to say, ‘Maybe this is something I could do.’ ”

Shapiro has a gift for working with his hands. His sand sculptures have won awards, and he repairs damaged furniture for moving companies. Although he has spent most of his life working in the aerospace industry, he dreams of becoming a Hollywood special effects man. But so far, he has been unable to land a job on a film set or at a theme park.

In a way, Shapiro has never grown up. It takes a child’s trusting nature to open one’s house to hundreds of strangers. Despite the risks, Shapiro plans to don a Dracula outfit to greet visitors and then work behind the scenes operating the special effects.

“I don’t know any of my fellow engineers who do this kind of thing,” he said.

Shapiro’s haunted house is at 14009 Candlewood Drive, off Hubbard Street, in Sylmar. It opens tonight and runs through Tuesday, Halloween night, from 5:30 to 9 p.m.