On a quiet street in Auckland's Mt Albert, one family's front garden is about to fill with skeletal hands clawing out of freshly dug graves. It's all part of the Halloween Haunted House fundraiser at the Oxenham family home on Mt Royal Ave — a tradition revived this year in memory of Jason Oxenham, a former NZ Herald photographer who died of multiple myeloma in April after a six-year illness.
The setup is no plastic-skeleton-on-the-porch affair. Over roughly a decade, Jason and Kristy Oxenham turned their 1920s villa into a full walk-through haunted experience, with themed rooms, elaborate props and costumes for the whole family. Past years have featured a creepy circus and a Game of Thrones zone complete with an Iron Throne made from a toilet. This year's theme leans into Stranger Things, with an alphabet wall, a grandfather clock and a dining-room archway converted into a portal to the Upside Down.
The tradition started small: a single cobweb outside the family's former Monaghan Ave home drew around 300 trick-or-treaters, and things snowballed from there. After a move to Mt Royal Ave in 2016, Jason suggested a kids' party, friends told friends, and the display grew year on year. The family has skipped only two Halloweens in ten years — the 2020 Covid lockdown and last year, while Jason was in treatment. A plan to run the event as a fundraiser in 2024 had to be shelved because the treatment he needed was only available in China.
This time the fundraiser is going ahead as intended. Tickets include entry to the walk-through maze, a photobooth, party favours and lolly bags for kids up to 15, with proceeds going to Myeloma New Zealand, which supports patients and research into a cancer diagnosed in around 450 New Zealanders a year. Inside the house, a shrine wall of photos and Jason's old costumes — he once dressed as Walter White from Breaking Bad, and another year went as Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, joking he was simply going "as himself" — keeps his memory at the centre of it all.
For travellers and locals alike, it's a rare chance to see one of New Zealand's most ambitious home-built Halloween displays while putting money toward a cause that matters to the family who built it. Bring the kids (with a warning about the scares), bring a costume, and expect queues — the family's displays have a history of drawing hundreds.
