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‘Cemetery’ raises funds
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Bryan Sizer, left, and Thomas Fee of New Castle, Pa., stand before the gates of the Croton Cemetery. The “cemetery” is an elaborate Halloween display the two friends operate to raise money for breast-cancer education and research. It’s open every night through Oct. 31.
By Jeanne Starmack
New Castle, PA.
They are waiting for you at the Croton Cemetery.
They would love to have you for dinner, but they are hungry, so don’t mind if they start eating without you.
Maybe a leg. Maybe an arm — best keep yours inside your car.
It’s foggy at the cemetery, and even though the lights are on, you can expect figures to emerge from the fog, lurching or leaping toward you. They are restless, you see. They won’t rest, in fact, until Halloween is over, and they have, for another year, collected enough money to help defeat an entity even more frightening than they are — that spectre that shows up on too many X-rays after mammograms.
October is breast-cancer awareness month, and that has inspired the creators of the Croton Cemetery to put their creation to work fighting for that cause.
As cars drive past the elaborate “cemetery” set up on six city lots beside 905 Loraine Ave. in the Croton area of New Castle, their drivers are being brave enough to roll down the window just long enough to deposit donations in a collection box set up alongside the street.
Thomas Fee and Bryan Sizer, best friends since childhood and the brains behind the cemetery’s fearsome creatures, were pleased last week that they already had collected more than $400. Last year was the first of the four years they’ve been putting up the display that they asked for donations, and they made $350 total.
The money will be given to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a foundation for education and research on breast cancer.
“Every dollar we collect gets donated,” said Fee as he tried to get a “criminal” in an “electric chair” to sit upright.
“Usually he sits back,” Fee explained. “But we got 50 mile-per-hour winds last night.”
Fee turned on the chair, and the criminal began to lurch back and forth. There are other monsters that move, too, such as an old woman who rocks in her chair as she tends to a crib full of bloodthirsty babies.
Whatever scares you, it’s probably in the cemetery. Clowns? There’s a roomful of them. Witches? They’re guarding a schoolhouse. Many of the monsters are out of Fee’s and Sizer’s imaginations, but there are some familiar faces among the Styrofoam tombstones as well.
Hannibal Lecter and Jigsaw from the “Saw” movies await visitors. If saws and their accompanying gore are what frighten you, a “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” scene will do the trick.
Fog machines and eerie music add atmosphere.
The display is all handmade, said Fee, pointing with pride to the bright-red sprayfoam insulation that curls around to become the guts in the “Massacre” scene.
“Everything was built at Bryan’s house,” Fee said. And they started early, building new scenes and creatures this year in mid-August and fixing old ones that were battered by wind and weather.
“It gets bigger and bigger every year,” said Fee.
Family and friends help them put up the display, then work alongside them at it.
“We have us and three guys here usually,” said Sizer, to wear masks and add some real life to the display.
There is still a great deal of empty lawn behind the display, too, so even more monsters can take up residence in the cemetery in the years to come.
“We have a few ideas in mind for next year,” Sizer said.
The cemetery opens every night, no matter what the weather, from 7 to 10 p.m. through Oct. 31.