St Cloud couple's ghostly pirate ship a Halloween tradition

ST. CLOUD, Minn. — St. Cloud residents Sara and Joe Storkamp have the spirits of Halloween in their front yard — literally. The pair have spent the past eight years collecting spooky decorations for families to wander through on the weekends leading up to Oct. 31.

A walking pirate-and-witch-themed haunted house snaked through the garage and backyard of the house, which is at 1037 Sunset Ridge Road. Last year, the couple saw about 300 children on Halloween day visit their decorations and haunted house.

The haunted house section is open only Friday through Sunday nights.

"The pirates started because we got two pirates, who we don't really have anymore, because they got really worn," Sara Storkamp said. "And then we're like 'well, what do with the pirates?'"

Her husband was trying to figure out what to do with an old trailer they used to use for camping at the time. The roof of it started leaking and the couple replaced it with another camper.

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"So, we're like 'well, what do we do with this thing?' and all of a sudden, my brain just clicked, 'let's cut the roof off and turn it into a pirate ship,'" Joe Storkamp said. "'Them guys need a place to hang out.'"

The pirate ship in question is a large wooden structure in the front yard with a Jolly Roger sail and sea monster decorations surrounding it.

Joe Storkamp said he doesn't have a construction background, but he's always worked with his hands. He used to be a welder.

Over the course of the last eight years or so, the couple has visited stores finding decorations, including a variety of skeletons dressed in pirate Halloween costumes.

Beyond the pirate yard, there is a graveyard with a myriad of inflatable and plastic grave markers and ghosts, a dragon station with all sorts of inflatable dragon decorations and a pumpkin patch with lit-up pumpkin decorations.

The side of the house is adorned with a castle facade, lined with gargoyles and medieval, spooky decorations.

"We still do it to this day; we keep on finding stuff," Sara Storkamp said. "We'll do circles."

They will drive around the area, looking for people selling decorations on Facebook Marketplace, and will make circles around the Twin Cities as well.

The two will also do similar displays for Christmas time, with decorations like the Grinch and Cindy Lou and a nativity scene.

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One of Joe Storkamp's favorite childhood memories was when it snowed on Halloween when he was a child.

"We had a huge snowstorm in '92, and we got like two feet of snow on Halloween," he said. "And … we all ditched our costumes, put on our snow pants and trudged through and went trick-or-treating anyways."

So, he likes putting up the decorations so others can have memories like he did — even if it means he has to shovel any snow his house gets in October.

"We weren't blessed to have kids of our own, so we just wanted to just kind of give back to the community and have our kid kicks a different way," Joe Storkamp said.

Sara Storkamp said children as young as infants and people as old as great-grandparents come to see the displays.

"And we don't charge anything; we just have a donation box, so if people feel like they want to donate, they can, if they don't, we don't expect anything," she said.

This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: St Cloud couple's ghostly pirate ship a Halloween tradition