The Halloween house collecting donations for Siloam Mission

Houses in and around Winnipeg are showcasing their Halloween decorations and doing good deeds for the community.

The Highbury House, located at 20 Highbury Rd., is proving that Halloween isn’t only about giving out tricks or treats; it’s also about giving back to vulnerable members of the community.

Homeowner Andrew Royal says he expects to see hundreds of people come through his haunted yard this year.

“Every single year it goes up,” he said.

Royal and his wife started decorating their house for Halloween more than 20 years ago, and have been accepting donations for Siloam Mission for the last few years.

“We’ve noticed that people were putting up bigger and more elaborate displays and we followed suit,” Royal said. “And we said, ‘You know what? We’re getting a lot of foot traffic, we’re getting a lot of people driving by and slowing down. Why not make something of it?’”

The couple is collecting:

• clothes for men, women and children,

• men’s, women’s and children’s winter wear, such as coats, hats, mittens and scarves,

• new unopened socks and underwear,

• new toiletries such as shampoo, soap, dental hygiene items, deodorant and feminine hygiene products.

Donations can be dropped off in a bin located outside 20 Highbury Rd. until Nov. 7.

Siloam Mission says these items are desperately needed, especially as the cold weather creeps in.

“The earlier we can get these items in in anticipation of handing a lot of them out, the better,” said Luke Thiessen, Siloam Mission’s communications specialist.

The organization said it has seen an increase in visitors this season, and expects many more in the coming months.

“Overall this year, we’re seeing more demand and less supply,” said Thiessen. “Our shelves have been a little more bare than this time last year and more people coming through asking for a lot of those products and services.”

Though the giving season typically falls around the winter holidays, experts say collecting donations during Halloween offers people a unique opportunity to support their community.

“Even the ones who don’t donate at that particular instance or that particular moment, that message about the fact that all of this is going towards a good cause would stay in their minds, at least for some time,” said Divya Ramachandran, an assistant marketing professor at the University of Manitoba.

Nearly six years and hundreds of pounds of donations later, Royal says he has a new goal.

“I’d like to break that 1,000 pounds. I would love to hit that,” he says. “I’m hoping that people will step up and drop off donations.”