For over 30 years, this Alamitos Beach neighborhood has embraced one special, spooky tradition: a haunted display, put on by actress and performer DeeDee Rescher.
This Halloween, Rescher will be joined by her two sisters for a final haunted show, marking the end of a sacred family tradition of over 50 years.
The front yard of the “Enchanted Cottage,” Rescher’s Long Beach home, transforms into an eerie, web-covered, ghoul-adorned demonstration every Halloween, spooking parents and children alike.
Rescher, known for her roles in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “The King of Queens” and “The Nanny,” has played the witch Esmeralda every Halloween since she was 14 years old, beckoning children to approach her cauldron full of candy.
Rescher invites actor friends to dress up as pirates, monsters and vampires, scaring visitors as they walk through the yard.
The haunted exhibit has its roots in 1966, at the Rescher family garage in Greenwich, Connecticut.
The eldest sister, Gaye Kruger Ribble, was 16 at the time of the family tradition’s inception, and wanted to create a spooky maze for children in the neighborhood.
With the help of her parents and sisters, she hung strips of black tarp from the garage ceiling, created makeshift narrow corridors and set up strobe lights and life-size, 4-foot-tall Penny Playpal dolls covered in ketchup to act as blood.
She recruited friends to creep behind a wall and stick their arms through holes, scaring visitors who passed by. They recorded spooky sounds that would play on a reel-to-reel tape player and displayed oil-smothered spaghetti and hard-boiled eggs in a cardboard box, mimicking worms and eyeballs.
“How it started was really about kids, imagination, creativity and showing up and making it happen,” Ribble said.
The star of their shows was the witch at the end of the maze with a smoking cauldron, whom Rescher still plays to this day.
“It does stimulate that part of you that loves magic, that loves to be a little scared … it’s the most fun when you bring a child and you want to also do it with them,” Ribble said.
The sisters kept it going for three years until Ribble moved out in 1969. Then, the haunted show shifted locations, from Greenwich to their mother’s home in Bel Air and to Ribble’s home in Sherman Oaks, where they did it for another 15 years.
In 1992, once Rescher moved to the Alamitos Beach neighborhood, she made her spooky debut at the “Enchanted Cottage.”
“It was the perfect house, the perfect location, and became such a staple in Long Beach,” Ribble said.
After her sisters moved out of California, Rescher continued the Halloween tradition on her own. Her front yard quickly became a popular neighborhood destination, with up to 200 children visiting the ever-changing pop-up display, with a surprise around every corner.
Decades later, Rescher welcomes second-generation visitors who were spooked by her display as children and now bring their own kids to continue the tradition.
“That just touches me, that I’ve made two generations happy,” Rescher said.
This year, the sisters will be helping Rescher put together the final show, calling it “the best one” they’ve ever done.
“We’re both very emotional and in a really good, positive, happy way because it’s something that we’re doing together as sisters … it’s a real sister bonding experience,” Ribble said.
Visitors might see some callbacks to early traditions at this year’s haunted display, including arms sticking out of holes and spaghetti “worms.” As an homage to the past, the show will be improv, with the sisters generating the storyline as they go.
“Whatever it’s going to be, it’s going to be triply as good because I’ve got my sisters,” Rescher said.
Afterwards, Rescher plans to donate the majority of her Halloween collection to a local charity or children’s theater, hoping someone will carry on the tradition.
The final haunted show will take place this Halloween on Oct. 31 at the “Enchanted Cottage” on the corner of Esperanza and First Street from 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Visitors can enjoy a spooky, captivating display put on by the Rescher sisters and their friends, and, of course, free candy.
