SAANICH – Keith is sitting in the front yard with a screwdriver adjusting a skeleton. But he doesn't have to unscrew his own cranium to recall happy memories from Halloweens past.

"We'd open our bags on the table and everybody tried to trade," he remembers with a laugh. "And trying to hide your candy so nobody else would take them!"

When Keith was growing up with his siblings, they always wished they lived in one of those "cool" Halloween houses. But it wasn't until Keith had kids of his own that he decided to decorate the yard with tombstones and a fog machine.

"I got quite good reviews from that," he says. 

Keith shows me old video from that first display and the next years. It features a ghost that he invented to light up and let loose in the sky via what looks like a motor and a clothes line. You can hear screams of delight in the background. 

"The kids quite enjoyed seeing the ghost float across the yard," Keith says.

Keith, who works with electronics at his job, enjoyed focusing his skills on something so fun. He started building a new character each year, from a witch stirring a cauldron to a horseman holding his head. "It just got more and more as I went on!"

Then Keith came up with a plan. "I decided to go a little bit better," he explains. "A little more complicated."

Keith spent more than a year designing, building and assembling all the components from scratch. He hired actors to record voices, and used a 3D printer to make skulls that could accommodate Keith's mechanics. 

"It's a lot of pain – a lot of time," Keith says, half grimacing and half-smiling. "A lot of long, long nights to get this thing to work."

The display takes over an entire yard by day and captures countless imaginations by night.

The 12-minute performance is set on board a pirate ship that's almost as tall and wide as the two-storey house it covers.

It features a crew of costumed skeletons that move in sync with music. The ship also features cannons that appear to fire into the ocean, causing real water to spray where they hit. Under the sea – and you can tell it's under the ocean because of the waving blue lights and talking clams – there are more animatronic skeletons.

They also perform songs and recite original dialogue while protecting a large chest of golden treasure.

While the display is impressive, its purpose is also remarkable. The display is a fundraiser for Victoria Hospice, in memory of Keith's sister Carol and brother Maynard. "They were in there for a while," Keith says quietly. "[The staff] there are just incredible."

You see, Keith's display is too big to fit in his own yard. So he constructed it outside the home he grew up in – fulfilling his siblings' childhood dream. 

"They got to see it almost to this point, but not quite," Keith says. "But my brother at the time said that he finally got to live in the 'cool house.'"

Everyone is invited to visit the Gordon Head Haunted Manor at 4407 Chartwell Dr. The display runs from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. until Oct. 31.

"People bring their kids," Keith smiles. "I think it helps bring the neighbourhood together."