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Courtesy of Laura Thake
5331 Casa Royale Drive in Oakville
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Courtesy of Laura Thake
5 Cimmaron Drive in St. Charles
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Courtesy of Laura Thake
201 Woolwich Lane in St. Louis
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Courtesy of Laura Thake
831 Westrun Drive in Ballwin
In 2015, Laura Thake and her nephew Mitch Miller put together a list of 15 home addresses where the homeowners put on spectacular Christmas light displays. They were certain there were more they’d yet to discover, but they were unsure of how to find them. The neighborhood app Nextdoor didn’t help them much. So Thake and Miller decided that they should make their own website with a list of addresses of the homes with bonkers lights. They sent a letter to each of the 15 homeowners with good light displays and asked if they would be willing to participate; they only heard from six. Thake wanted to drop it. Miller thought they should move forward with the six. “I'm the one who built the website, and Mitch is the one who's along for the fun,” she says, laughing. “He was like, ‘I think you should build the website and see what happens.’ And I'm like, ‘That's a lot of work, Mitch.’”
But build it she did. She titled the website Holiday Light Hopping, and after a story about the site made it into the Webster-Kirkwood Times, the audience—and the number of homeowners who wanted to participate—grew. Thake added Halloween lights the following year, because many of the homeowners who decorated for Christmas also went all out for Halloween. There are now more than 60 decked-out Halloween houses on the site.
Homeowners—who have anonymity on the site—must submit their houses. Thake vets each house and takes photos for the site so people can see what they look like before taking a trip to see the decorations. She also organizes them into helpful maps so people wanting to drive one route can click on a Google map and follow directions from there.
Thake’s favorite route is labeled “Halloween Night Only” on her website. The houses on this route only set out their displays on October 31. “There are free haunted houses, they give away great candy or toys, and they are so creative and over the top,” Thake says. “Some of them have animatronics that they've spent thousands of dollars on each character, and they might have 10 of them in the front yard. They only put them out on Halloween night because they're valuable and they don't want them to get rained on.”
Scroll down to see Halloween light routes from Holiday Light Hopping. Click on "more options" on the map to see the full route:
North County:
Central Suburbs:
Ballwin and Creve Coeur:
Affton and St. Louis City:
St. Charles County:
South County:
Halloween night only:
