Santa Clara • Rum’s Revenge may be docked and never leave port, but Todd and Shari Wood can’t help but feel a little adrift as they inspect the massive pirate ship they have erected in front of their Santa Clara home.
For starters, they are miffed about a misfiring cannon on the boat’s broadside. Another cause for bugaboo is the malfunctioning coffin lid in the ship’s walkthrough. Then there is Claudia, who is supposed to pop up anytime, but is clearly lying down on the job.
Welcome to the Woods’ world at their 15th annual Haunted Wood Cove display, which runs through Nov. 1 and is loosely based this year on Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion attractions. There are always repairs to make, costumes to mend and touch-ups to apply before putting on the show from 6:30 to 10:30 each evening.
Alas, the couple has a problem. How, they fret, can they get Rum’s Revenge shipshape when their skeleton crew is clearly in no shape to help? Todd makes no bones about the fact that his cast of layabouts is about as useless as “a one-toothed beaver in a petrified forest.”
Leering Larry, for example, is great at ogling visitors but doesn’t have the eye or skill to do much else. Capt. Jack Sparrow is too busy swilling booze and singing sea shanties from the comfort of his rocking chair to pitch in. Drunken Duncan, ginned up on rum as always, is also a waste case.
Hanging Harry is half gone, hanging from a wall and missing his body from the waist down. As for the others? If they are not dead drunk, they are just plain dead, cutlasses protruding from their chests.
Yet, this doesn’t stop the ship’s captain from issuing prerecorded commands and pirate etiquette lessons via the loudspeaker throughout the show.
The cannons, he tells the crowd, are off-limits during games of hide and seek. Oh, he adds, this year’s show is sponsored by Skittles.
“So every time we fire a cannon,” he laments, “we have to say, ‘Taste the rainbow.’ Pirate economics ain’t what they used to be.”
15 years of changes
Haunted Wood Cove has come a long way since its maiden launch 15 years ago at the Woods’ Santa Clara home on 1993 Gubler Drive. What began as a trickle of visitors in the early years now draws torrents of excited children and adults — hundreds each night and a couple of thousand on Halloween.
“We try to make it better and more efficient every year,” Shari said.
This year’s ship is fashioned out of wooden planks that bolt together rather than plywood and light pink foam that was used in the previous iteration. It is further overlaid with driftwood-like EVA foam to give the vessel an old and dilapidated look.
Aided by friends and neighbors, Todd and Shari now use a pulley system to raise the sails rather than scamper up masts and risk life and limb. An aviation electrical engineer, Todd also has crafted his own filter system to spew fog throughout the ship and ensure the six cannons on its broadside spout smoke when they fire.
The cannons, Todd explained, are four-inch PVC pipes mounted to smoke machines on a drawer slide, with air servos that trigger modified screen-door closers to make the weapons recoil. The skeletons also have digital receivers embedded in their heads that empower them to look around and talk via an audio track. Todd has engineered a system to control the lights and synchronize them to music. He controls everything from his smartphone.
Peter Plank, straddling a plank overhead, surveys the action and holds a shark’s head that shoots water into the smallish ponds, which also sport geysers that spit water into the air.
To cut down on waste, the system recirculates the same water in a closed loop rather than cycling fresh water through the ponds and shark’s head.
“Pirates today are big on sustainability,” Todd said.
Pirates and ghouls
One thing that hasn’t changed is the pirate ship’s moniker.
“We named it Rum’s Revenge because pirates like rum and every time you drink, there is always a price to pay,” quipped Todd, who enjoys raising a glass when he and Shari watch the parade of people boarding the boat through the stern and exiting through the bow each evening.
Visitors are greeted by skeletons with glowing eyes and portraits of people who morph into ghouls or have eyes that track visitors wherever they go.
There is also a cast of Disney characters. Madame Leota conducts a seance inside a crystal ball. Constance Hatchaway, aka the Black Widow Bride, searches for another groom to dispatch. A nearby cemetery is graced with tombstones bearing names like U.R. Gone, G.I. Missue and Pearl E. Gates.
Growing up in Southern California, Todd and Shari were both Disney fans who occasionally visited the theme park
“I didn’t go as much as I liked because I couldn’t afford it,” Shari said.
Ditto for Todd, who teamed up with two older brothers to scrounge together household items and trash to make cardboard skeletons and other characters they used to decorate a home in their neighborhood each Halloween.
Todd and Shari are now using their improvisational skills to bring that Halloween magic to Santa Clara. Asked where he gleans much of his Halloween skills, Todd sums it up succinctly: “YouTube,” he said. “I’ll also research how others have made something or figure it out on my own.”
Philanthropy over plunder
As much as they enjoy Halloween, the couple’s focus is on fun, not fright. The only exception is Claudia, who, when in good repair, forcefully pops up out of a coffin into a sitting position. She’s back this year after being banned several years ago for losing her head.
“Claudia popped up and her head flew off, hitting this kid right in the chest,” Todd recalled. “He wasn’t hurt, but he was trying to scream so hard that his voice was silent. We rushed up to his parents to tell them how sorry we were, but they were laughing because their kid’s mouth was open and nothing was coming out.”
Haunted Wood Cove has become a Halloween staple, delighting first-timers and repeat visitors from Logan to Las Vegas. Even so, it doesn’t generate a return on the Woods’ investment in time and treasure.
Indeed, where profit is concerned, their operation has gone to the dogs — literally. They don’t charge for admission, though they encourage people to make donations. Some of the money is used to help defray their expenses, but most of it is divvied up and donated to local animal rescue operations. Last year, that totaled roughly $3,000.
So why do it?
“To see the joy it brings people and because it’s fun,” Todd said.
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