By Gabriella Vrsalovich
On Halloween night, Braeburn Road became a gateway to your worst nightmares, and if you survived … you got candy.
Open for one night a year, the quiet street transformed into an exhilarating attraction. Families would line up and wait for an hour to brave the haunted mazes where creepy characters lurked around every corner.
Judy Pastor and Vance Weisbruch moved into their Altadena home in 1987.
“Altadena was a community that we wanted to be in. Very versatile, close to the mountains, and just very serene,” Weisbruch said.
Built with character in 1924, they lived in a beautiful English style home on Braeburn Road.
Though their home stood quietly on Braeburn Road in the beginning years, Halloween turned it into an area full of excitement.
The decorations began 24 years ago with just “two barrels of hay and big pumpkins,” Weisbruch said.
Pastor and Weisbruch’s kids spurred the beginning of an Altadena legacy.
“The reason why we started was, because, during that time, there were warnings on the news about people putting needles and other things into candy, so I didn’t want my kids trick or treating and being exposed to that,” Pastor explained.
What started with a few decorations quickly turned into something bigger. Each year, the family would add more props to their home.
“My biggest goal was to just entertain my kids in a safe environment,” Pastor said.
Word spread, and soon the haunted home became a major Halloween attraction, not just for Altadena locals, but for communities across Southern California.
“We had people coming from Long Beach, Santa Clarita,” Weisbruch said.
As thousands of people began to flood the streets, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors paid $1,000 for a permit to close off the street, and have highway patrol guiding traffic, a gift from them to the community.
The haunted experience was free to the public. Pastor and Weisbruch spent their own money, respectfully declining donations.
“It was for the community, we did it for the kids,” Pastor emphasized. They spent over $1,000 in candy, which Pastor said “would run out in 45 minutes,” and had Halloween decorations worth over $40,000.
Pastor and Weisbruch received support from the community.
“We got neighborhood kids to help, in an inventive way,” Pastor said. “We went to their schools and asked if they needed service hours, so we would sign off on their hours if they helped us set it up and bring it down.”
Volunteering at the haunted house quickly became a beloved tradition. Kids looked forward to being apart of the excitement, and for some, it turned into a yearly commitment. Seven of them returned to help out for four years in a row.
After 16 continuous years of hard work and excitement, Pastor and Weisbruch decided to take a break on their haunted home.
“We stopped it as our kids grew up,” Pastor said. “They loved it but they were like ‘okay, this is getting really big’, and as the kids who volunteered moved on, it was just Judy and I setting up everything ourselves, which for me was therapeutic, because I enjoyed doing it, but tiring” Weisbruch shared.
Even after stepping back, the couple continued to decorate, just in what Pastor called “a more friendlier way.”
They set up inflatables, added a few gory touches, and still left out a candy bowl on their front porch. Just last year, Weisbruch dressed as a bushman, hiding behind a candy bowl to give a little scare to those brave enough to walk through the spooky decorations and grab some candy.
Despite taking a step back from the large-scale decorations, the couple’s dedication to their community and traditions remained strong, until a fire struck and changed everything.
Fire changed everything
On Jan. 7, the Eaton fire ignited.
Pastor and Weisbruch were driving back home from picking up dinner when they looked up the mountain and saw the flames.
“We started calling our neighbors and nobody got any kind of warning,” Weisbruch said.
The fire began small but quickly grew as the wind shifted, driving flames down the mountain. The couple stayed at their home, contacting close family members also living in Altadena, “and again, no one got a warning,” Weisbruch said.
“We got neighborhood kids to help, in an inventive way. “We went to their schools and asked if they needed service hours, so we would sign off on their hours if they helped us set it up and bring it down.” — Judy Pastor
Pastor recalled that her mom planned to stay home that night and never received any warning.
“If we hadn’t gotten her out, she wouldn’t have been safe. That’s what happened to so many, it’s why so many people lost their lives,” Pastor said.
Pastor shared that she was at their home until 2 in the morning, and Weisbruch says he was there “with my little hose until 4 in the morning.”
To look around your neighborhood, full of memories, now burning to the ground was devastating.
“I mean we’ve been through fires before in the nineties, but this was something that was devastating, something that I’ve never seen before,” Weisbruch said.
Weisbruch, along with his neighbors, fought the fires in their neighborhood all night, using water from hoses.
“I could barely see. All I had was a face mask on, no goggles, which was a mistake. As I was walking down our street, I bumped into the curb,” Weisbruch recalled, realizing just how serious the situation had become.
Driving up to Braeburn Road, Pastor and Weisbruch saw hundreds of homes gone.
“The whole block, all of the beautiful Spanish and English homes were gone,” Weisbruch said.
Their home was gone too.
“It was such a devastation when just a couple of hours earlier, you had a home, and hours later, everything from your whole life is gone,” Weisburch admits.
Pastor added: “What I fully regret not thinking about was the pictures, our wedding photos, my wedding band, cameras with videos saved of our kids growing up.”
Weisbruch had a metal suitcase filled with letters from family members in World War II.
Weisbruch remembered how he played Santa Clause for the community during Christmas and lost “my Santa Clause outfit that my mom, who had a bridal store, made for me.”
The couple’s son, along with Pastor’s mother, also lost their homes in Altadena.
“You know, my home is gone, I can’t go to my son’s house, and I can’t even go to my mother’s either,” Pastor said.
The future
Even months later, moving forward can be a challenge. Walking through stores can be difficult for Pastor and Weisbruch.
“We’re looking at things and it’s just memorabilia, things that remind us of what we no longer have, like furniture, or just small specific items,” Weisburch said.
Pastor and Weisbruch are rebuilding, but they plan to become more minimalist.
As Weisbruch said, “We don’t need all that stuff anymore.” While they don’t plan to purchase as many Halloween decorations as they once had, they’re committed to continuing the tradition in a simpler way.
Looking ahead, they are unsure what to expect as Altadena rebuilds.
“We hope it’s going to stay the same as it used to be, but we never know, and some developers are popping in these pre-fab homes that do not have character,” Weisbruch added.
Pastor and Weisbruch hope that their neighbors stay, but they understand that not everyone will be able to return.
Their hope is that the homes being rebuilt will carry the same personality and character that made Altadena feel like home.
As their home is rebuilt, they plan to return to decorating for Halloween.
“We want to bring the community back together again,” Pastor says, “We get a lot of joy out of it.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Gabriella Vrsalovich, 17, attends Mayfield Senior School in Pasadena. Vrsalovich took part in the Wildfire Youth Media Initiative, through the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. The initiative brought together students with working journalists and USC Annenberg professors in an effort to collect oral histories and to enable students to report on their own communities in the aftermath of the fires. The goal of the four-week project, according to its organizers, was to create a model to help students cover natural disasters and other significant local stories.