56 Dead Creek Swamp

“Down the bayou amongst the marshy wetlands and the alligators lies an old mill.  The mill sits along a swamp full of green and black sludge fed by Dead Creek.  Many stories still circle the community regarding the swamp and its infamous lore.  A delivery, destined for the old mill, showed that infamous address: 56 Dead Creek Swamp, never reached its destination.  The evidence of the swamp’s deadly nature is still left on display near the old mill assuring that no other delivery service will ever be seen near Dead Creek Swamp.”

Now that’s one great piece of Halloween lore!  One of my gripes about collecting the Department 56 Halloween Village, and one of the reasons that I started my blog, is that there is virtually no online collector community.  Sure, if you do a search on Google, you’ll find a million sites trying to sell you stuff.  However, if you want to read about collecting or village building, your options are few and far between.

I’m excited to say there is now one more option out there!  Another collector, inspired by my site and his passion for Department 56 Halloween collecting, has started 56 Dead Creek Swamp.  The site has only been up for a few weeks, but it’s off to a great start.  Of course, the site is named for one of the classics of the Department 56 Halloween line, Dead Creek Mill.

If you’re interested in Halloween Villages, I encourage you to dive into the swamp.  There’s nothing like a midnight swim!

News From Ghost Town

This site has been a bit of a ghost town as of late, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been building my village!  Since last Halloween, I’ve added a number of great new pieces.

For starters, I picked up the Haunted Rails Sleeper Car.  This is a unique, eye-catching addition to the Haunted Rails train collection.  It’s basically a flat-bed train car piled high with coffins.  Real metal chains hold the coffins on the flat-bed.  One of the coffins even has a vampire peeking out.  The coffins have an eerie green light shining from inside, and there is a lit jack-o-lantern on the rear of the car.  Wiring is the same as all of the other “middle” train cars; there is a male plug on one end and female on the other so you can string all of the cars together.

My prize addition this year is the Haunted Coal Car.  This piece was retired in 2009, and is one of the more difficult pieces to find at this point.  Two zombies drive an old fashioned “hand car” back and forth along a train track about three feet long.  At one end, the track disappears inside a spooky cave featuring various beasties.  The electronic box is hidden inside the cave, and connects via a normal lighted-building adapter.  With three feet of movement, this is one of the most animated pieces Department 56 has ever produced!

A late addition to this year’s village was the Three Witches Cauldron Haunt.  I like to go to the local store in my home town to purchase one last piece for my village right before Halloween each year, after the rest of my village is set up.  This year, I felt like I had one open spot in my landscape that was just screaming for an additional house.  The only houses they still had on sale that I didn’t already have were the Three Witches Cauldron Haunt and the Big Horn Saloon.  While I love the old west ghost town theme, I feel like that’s a whole separate village that kind of clashes with the pieces I have now.  However, the Three Witches Cauldron Haunt is a great piece that matches well with others that I own such as the Witch Way Flight School.

The Three Witches Cauldron Haunt is a great little house with a pointed witch’s hat for a roof.  Three cauldrons light up with different colors on the front lawn, and the interior of the building lights up as well.  One complaint I have is the wiring scheme, which is horrible.  One end of the wire has the normal AC adapter plug, but the other end runs to a “night light” style bulb.  This is similar to the really old Christmas Village pieces; if you own and Dickens’ village pieces from 20 years ago, you know what I’m talking about.  These bulbs are hard to run through your scenery, the burn hot, and they burn out very fast.  I’m very annoyed to see Department 56 taking this step backwards in technology.

I’ve picked up a few other pieces this year as well.  Bone to Be Wild features a skeleton Hell’s Angel riding on a scary motorcycle.  Chilled to the Bone has a skeleton standing at a crossroads, cowering beneath a ratty umbrella.  Here, Kitty, Kitty is a cool piece that has a skeleton dog chasing a black cat up a tree.  All of these pieces are smaller accessories with no lights or sound, but they still really add to my 56 Skeletons Halloween Village.

That pretty well covers my new additions since last year.  I may have forgotten a piece in there somewhere, so keep your eyes open when I post pictures of this year’s village.  Halloween is almost here, but there’s still a little time left to find that last spooky touch to your village!

The Lists

I’ve added a couple new pages to 56 Skeletons:

Pieces I Own – The latest list of all of the Department 56 Snow Village Halloween pieces I own.  As my village grows in size, I will add each new piece to this running list.

Pieces I Want – A series of “Top 13” lists of pieces I’ve got my eye on in various categories.  As Department 56 releases great new pieces, and as I obtain new pieces off these lists, I’ll modify these lists to show the latest objects of my desire.

Why 56 Skeletons?

When I started thinking about starting a blog for my Halloween Village, one of the first things I thought about was what to name it.  I wanted something that was catchy, spooky, and somehow related to the buildings and accessories I collect.  In the end, I settled on 56 Skeletons.

The inspiration for including the number “56” should be fairly obvious.  This blog is about my Department 56 Halloween Village, and the 56 is a reference to the company that makes this wonderful collection.

The idea of combining “56” with “Skeletons” came from a few places.  One of my inspirations was the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyworld, which is famous for having “999 Happy Haunts.”  I’ve loved that ride since I was a young kid, and given the theme, it seemed a perfect fit for my blog.

From there, I thought about the type of “haunts” that populate my Halloween Village.  While I started with witches, it didn’t take long before Department 56’s skeletons grabbed my attention.  Skeletons have always been one of my favorite Halloween characters.  To this day, I still associate Halloween with Disney’s old skeleton-themed Silly Symphony, the Skeleton Dance.  I also love Jack Skellington from the Nightmare Before Christmas and the skeletons in the Corpse Bride.  For me, these spooky-fun skeletons represent everything that is great about Halloween.

Department 56 has done a wonderful job capturing my childhood image of the true Halloween skeleton.  Skeletons are probably the most common type of Halloween creature in the collection, and I love every one of them.  I can’t think of any Halloween decoration that could be better than a whole village full of skeletons.

So, as I settled on a name for my blog, I also settled on a new goal for my Halloween Village: to someday have a village that actually contains 56 Skeletons.  I don’t know Department 56 has even produced this many to date, but hopefully they will help get me there, and this blog will chronicle my journey!

The Early Years

While I’ve been collecting Department 56 Halloween Village pieces for several years now, my displays were not very creative the first few years.  In fact, for the first year or two, all I did was set up the Witch Way Flight School on my kitchen counter.  My one lonely building was hardly a “village,” but I was short on time and money, so it had to suffice.  Still, it was fun.

Over the next few years, I added a few small pieces, mostly inexpensive accessories like Skeleton Crew, Resting My Bones, and Time To Feed The Monsters.  I still didn’t put much effort into my setup, but at least my village was slowly growing.

Then, after Halloween 2009, when family members asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I included a few Halloween Village pieces on my list.  I got my first piece of the Haunted Rails train (oddly, the Haunted Rails Dining Car, not the engine), along with a few other pieces.  Then I got another piece or two for my birthday in early 2010.  My Halloween 2010 display was still modest, but my village was definitely growing.

As 2010 rolled over into 2011, things really started to take off.  I got a few more pieces as gifts, and started a tradition with my family of buying one larger piece each year to kick off the Halloween season.

I also went to Jo-Ann Fabric, and found some great printed fabric to use as my first real village scenery.  I found a great green fabric that matched the green bases of the Department 56 pieces quite well.  I also found a blue fabric that I used to cut a small pond in order to all some water to my scene.

I ran all the cords under the fabric, punching small holes to allow the wires to plug into the figures and buildings.  By the time Halloween 2011 arrived, I had what looked like a real village display.  Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures, but ah, the memories.

Since then, my plans for 2012 have grown.  I’ve added more pieces, and started on more scenery.  In the coming months, as I wait for Halloween, I will reveal some of what I’ve been working on for this fall’s display.  It will be much more grandiose than my early days of the Witch Way Flight School sitting alone on my countertop!

Welcome to My Nightmare

Several years ago, while visiting Faneuil Hall in Boston, I happened across a store called the Christmas Dove.  It was a fun holiday store that sprawled across an upstairs area above several other stores, and sadly, it is now closed.  However, when I was there, I was treated to several huge Department 56 displays, including the first display I’d ever seen of Department 56’s Halloween Village.  Instantly I was hooked.  I purchased the Witch Way Flight School, the first piece of my very own village.  The rest is history.

This blog is dedicated to my Department 56 Halloween, which has become a year-round hobby even though I only display it during the Halloween season.  I will share pictures, stories, and whatever else comes to mind related to my village.  Hopefully there are a few other Halloween village psychos out there who will enjoy the ride, and maybe even get a few ideas for their own village!