For some, longtime family traditions look like the entire family gathering for Christmas or going out to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July.
But for Ryan Leach, his family’s tradition is scaring random people — sometimes by chasing them with a chainsaw — at his family’s home in Pleasanton every Halloween.
“Everyone just gets into the scare spirit,” he told the Weekly. “It’s just funny knowing that someone else is going to get scared and you get to watch it and they don’t know what’s coming.”
But with his dad aging, Leach said he isn’t sure how much longer his dad will be able to continue hosting their community haunted house at 6230 Corte Fuego — which is why he hopes locals can join his family for some free Halloween fun this year to celebrate 40 years of scaring the neighbors.
Leach said his dad has always loved having a little fun for Halloween. Before his family moved to Pleasanton 40 years ago, his dad would set up a coffin during Halloween where he would jump out of and scare people.
So when his family moved to Pleasanton in 1985, Leach said his dad knew he had to set something up at their new house.
After that first Halloween, it became a tradition every year to decorate the home with the entire family and put on a haunted house where kids would have to go inside to get the candy.
“Halloween night for me growing up was like the best four hours of the year, hands down,” Leach said. “When I was little I never went trick-or-treating. I just stayed (home) and either scared kids or watched and handed out candy.”
The haunted house started small in the garage with Leach’s brother making masks and props and then scaring people as the kids would walk in and grab the candy. Then it evolved over the years to include other areas of the house, motion censored props and someone, usually his dad, dressing up and chasing people with a chainsaw — without the chain.
As Leach grew up, he began seeing the neighborhoods change and attendance dwindle every year for their makeshift haunted house. And when the COVID pandemic hit, the Halloween landscape seemingly changed even more as people were less inclined to walk into a person’s home.
But even though their attendance has gone from thousands to hundreds over the years, Leach said the family is still keeping his dad’s original tradition alive through his kids and the rest of his family.
From leading people along the haunted house maze as sort of a tour guide, to joining in on the fun of scaring people, Leach said his kids and other younger members of the greater family having taken more ownership of the tradition, which he appreciates seeing given how disconnected some younger people seem to be in this age of technology.
“I think these experiences allow the younger generations to kind of get the sense of: This is what it used to be like and (how it) could be like again if we get this sense of community … coming back that I feel like we kind of lost,” he said.
He also said he hopes to see more people out this year, not just because of the fact that the holiday falls on a Friday, but because they are celebrating 40 years of scaring fellow Pleasanton residents and because they want to make it a special occasion for his dad, who Leach said might not have many more haunted houses left in him — despite Leach saying his dad still dresses up and chases people with that chainsaw.
“The month of Halloween turns my dad into a kid again and it is so cool to see,” Leach said. “There’s been so many years that my dad’s like ‘Maybe I’m not going to do it this year,’ … but then all of the sudden he has seven grandkids and it’s like, ‘Well now I have to do it for them.'”
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