Park Slope parents may swear by Montessori toys and organic snacks — but come Halloween, it’s all plastic fangs and candy corn on the Brooklyn neighborhood’s tree-lined streets.
And in this storybook version of spooky suburbia, where every stoop tells a tale and every shriek of laughter echoes off the brownstones, there’s one particularly haunted block locals are ready to crown the most fun — 11th St. between Prospect Park West and 8th Avenue.
As early as 3 o’clock in the afternoon on the scariest night of the year, the first wave of trick-or-treaters could be seen flocking to the strip’s selection of show-stopping displays.
The vibes at 606 11th St. were pure Halloween harmony — guitarists Camp Childers and Mike Coon dueled over spooky movie riffs on the steps as kids gawked, grooved, and took turns petting Inca, Childers’ schnauzer sidekick dressed as a bat.
“People in Park Slope are more enthusiastic about Halloween than any other holiday, I think,” Coon told The Post, as toddlers began lining up for candy.
“We’re always completely out by 5:30 because there are so many kids trick or treating,” he added. “We can never get enough candy to prepare for Halloween on this block.”
“Our neighbors with the dinosaurs out front got the whole ball rolling. They started the tradition of decorating on this block,” Childers explained.
He was talking about Marcel, Cheryl and Jack Van Ooyen, father, mother and son who created and decorated the “Jurassic Park Slope” stoop, complete with a towering T. rex, stegosaurus and brachiosaurus guarding their front steps.
Outside 594 11th St., the John Williams’ “Jurassic Park” theme blared from speakers as kids gawked at the life-sized dinos — and grabbed candy from the Van Ooyens, who were decked out as park rangers.
“We’ve been decorating our stoop for 17 years,” Marcel told The Post, noting that every year they do a different theme. This year, the family liked the pun, “Jurassic Park Slope.”
About three years ago, he and his neighbors took things up a notch — getting a permit to shut the block to cars and let the ghouls roam free. “Now, it’s turned into a big, fun block party,” he said with a beaming smile.
“Building our decor every year is so rewarding when you see how excited the families here get and the children’s reactions,” Cheryl added.
“When ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ was released this summer we knew we had to do this for Halloween 2025. We started building the dinosaurs in our living room last month. We might make Santa hats and put them on the dinosaurs for Christmastime decorations,” she said.
The family built their dinos from scratch — starting with wooden frames, layering on chicken wire, landscape fabric and spray foam to give them that scaly, lifelike skin.
The Van Ooyens even recycle their creations — this year’s T. rex was previously a giant rat, a “Game of Thrones” dragon and more.
“There are so many kids in Park Slope, and they love dinosaurs. So many are dressed up as them this year,” he said, adding that the theme worked out perfectly.
Across the street at 597 11th St., the Iarussi family went full nautical — with swirling tentacles, a shipwrecked vessel bearing a lifebuoy labeled “Park Sloop,” and a stage jutting off the steps where the crew greeted trick-or-treaters below.
They dressed the part, too — as pirate princesses, sea captains and mermaid goddesses.
“We’ve been doing this for seven years. We were inspired by our neighbors, the Van Ooyens,” Adam Iarussi told The Post.
His daughter Laila Iarussi, and her friend Lexi Bonfils, came up with the idea to have an underwater sea tentacle theme with a sunken ship.
“That was like July 28,” Adam said, noting that the family usually plans their Halloween decor months in advance every year.
“We locked down the concept then and started sketching about it and thinking about it. We started working on it the weekend after Labor Day.”
Last year, they made a giant Beetlejuice-inspired display. The year before, it was Barbiecore.
“It’s always a big family art project,” Deborah Iarussi said, adding that it’s also their way of meeting “all the kids on the block” who come up and down the street all October — just to see the updates on their decor leading up to Halloween.
For spooky season-loving Slopers, decking out the front steps isn’t just decoration — it’s tradition, said Vivien F., proprietor of the popular Park Slope Living social media feed.
“It means a lot to our community and all the neighbors who put in months of effort into spreading cheer,” she told The Post, asking to keep her last name private. “Our strong community, beautiful architecture and leafy streets make this the best neighborhood to celebrate Halloween in.
In recent years, she’s started putting together the neighborhood’s Spooky Stoops Map — a guide to the most decked-out homes in the area, like the one at 634 10th St., where father-son duo Stephen and Roman Barr served up some graveyard humor — plastic skeletons lounging at a table, sipping “eyes-cold lemonade” (yes, with fake eyeballs) with a sign that read, “Raising money to raise the dead.”
“We like to tease. We’ve been doing witty displays like this for three years. Our first one was skeletons eating a box of Life cereal. Last year, we did a Gaba-Ghoul set-up with a skeleton eating pasta. Every year, we’ve been making something food-related. Every October, we walk around and brainstorm,” Stephen told The Post.
“I thought of this idea on the bus with my dad. I thought maybe we could do something with lemonade and eyes and this popped into our minds,” Roman explained.
“We didn’t use food dye, it was food d-i-e,” the pint-sized punster joked.
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