These Allerton neighbours have lit up their homes to create a charity Halloween trail

Neighbours in Allerton have transformed their road from Plattsville to Batsville for the weekend to create a spooky Halloween trail for families.

A total of 42 houses on and running from Plattsville Road, off Allerton Road, have gone batty with the decorations, adding everything from cobwebs and skulls to a mad scientist display.

They’ve strung up twinkly lights to mark the start of the trail and there’s a projection at the top.

Kids can walk from house to house and along the route there are ghoulish witch’s ingredients in each window which, once they’re written onto an activity sheet, all make up a final magic potion.

The Batsville Halloween Trail is the third event organised by the group of neighbours, who raise money for different charities each time.

A Christmas trail collected £1,000 for the Salvation Army and food donations for Liverpool’s Micah food bank, and one at Easter raised a further £1,050 plus food for Micah.

This time they’ve set up a Just Giving page for the Whitechapel Centre to help the homeless, and again they’ll have food bank collection points on the road where people can leave cans and packets of dried food.

Rachael Aron, who helps co-ordinate the trails with a couple of other residents, says the idea has really gained momentum since they started during lockdown last year.

“Last Halloween, it was near half term and because we’d gone back into lockdown everyone was doing their daily walks again so we thought we’d give them something to look at,” she explains.

“The Christmas and Easter ones were more organised and now we’ve actually got a sub-committee which helps get everything together.

“We’ve given everyone bats to put in their windows – six of us cut out 350 bats! – and an ingredient for a magic spell to put in the windows, and we’ve asked them all to do pumpkins – then on top of that they can do whatever they like.

“There’s cobwebs, Day of the Dead, lots of bats, skulls, a mad scientist, gravestones … people have put so much effort in.

“For our first Halloween, people went to each house and got a line for a poem and if they completed the trail they ended up with the full poem. This time it’s a bit simpler, so we’ve got silly witches ingredients in the windows, like witch’s fingernail, puppy bogie, eye of newt …

“The kids get a trail sheet with each house number on, there’s some colouring in to do, they look at the windows, find the magic ingredient and write it down and on the back page they can concoct their own spell.

“It means that, although we suggest starting the trail at the Allerton Road end, you can really join in anywhere because we’ve got houses in the roads running off ours too, and a lady on Rutherford Road at the top has created a bit of a finale.”

Rachael says there will be a QR code on the activity sheet and on the route which links to the Just Giving page, but all donations are voluntary. It’s really a free event for everybody to take part in and enjoy.

“And we’ve got a little Tesco at the bottom of the road so if anyone doesn’t realise about the food bank collection and they want to donate, they can always pop down and get something to bring. That’s what people did last time so we’re hopeful they’ll do that again.”

Previous trails have attracted families from all over south Liverpool, with people walking from St Michaels, Aigburth and Wavertree to join in.

For the Batsville Trail, houses have been decorated over Thursday and Friday, ready to be unveiled for the weekend.

“It’s about dressing the street, bringing everyone together and giving a different kind of trick or treat trail so rather than just knocking on doors for sweets kids can actually do something.

“We’ve got quite a few new neighbours on the street and they’ve all got involved which is lovely, it just adds something to trick or treat and it’s an extra reason to get kids out of the house because once they start the trail they want to find them all.”

You can find out more and donate here.