As recovery continues, flood-damaged Stoney Creek throws Halloween bash

Nov. 01--STONEY CREEK -- From the RV where he's living with his wife, four children, dog and two of his sister's dogs, Jesse Williams hatched a Halloween plan.

Williams' home at the end of Stoney Creek Lane has been the site of Halloween exhibitions the neighbors can recall in an instant. One year, he had coffins on hydraulics in the yard, ready to spring at unsuspecting children. Another year, he built a time machine display, instructing kids to make up stories when they left, a ruse that fell apart when one child walked out and said, "Nothing happened."

This year's stakes were higher, though.

Just six weeks ago, the Leland subdivision was the site of some of Hurricane Florence's most dramatic flooding, with water filling the entire first floor of dozens of homes that remain empty. Halloween represented a chance to bring the neighbors, nearly all of whom are living elsewhere, together for a candy- and costume-fueled celebration.

So Williams put a fence on Stoney Creek Lane just before Ruby Stone Court and basically used the entire flood-damaged neighborhood for the Halloween display. Monsters present included a massive hydraulic-assisted Yeti grabbing at a pickup truck, a spider crawling over a house, and skeletons crawling from a house's open windows.

"We had to do a lot of, 'Hey, are you cool with this?' Like, you know the house is destroyed, but it's their home and it's personal and sensitive, and we just want to be respectful," Williams said. "And everybody was like, 'Yes!'"

Frank Marion was among the neighbors helping Williams arrange lighting Wednesday as the sun set.

"I want to have a little normalcy in my life. I don't want to know that I live in a trailer right now. I don't want to know that my house is gutted. I don't want to know that my insurance may or may not cover everything," Marion said.

In a sense, the normalcy returned Wednesday night.

It was in children's screams when a clown, sitting still enough that they couldn't tell whether it was man or statue, flinched as they reached for the candy in its dish. It was in the children's costumes -- princesses and superheroes and skeleton ninjas. It was in DJ Jeff Hertzog scrambling to find an iPhone that would fit the aux cord, flipping on "Monster Mash" as soon as he had.

Cradling a candy dish holding Halloween staples Snickers and Three Musketeers, Ashley Hancock said, "It's nice just to be able to hang out and watch the little kids get scared."

The last time the neighborhood came together was in a more formal setting, Hancock said, Monday, at a town hall meeting hosted by U.S. Rep. David Rouzer. Describing what it meant to have a night with her neighbors Wednesday, Hancock said, "Life. I think that after this disaster there's still hope."

Still, the snippets of conversation that floated out between songs were about FEMA claims and what options the bureaucratic mysteries of insurance companies and flood plains have made available.

And when one child asked if he could slip through the chain link fence and trick or treat at the end of Stoney Creek Lane, Williams said, "There's no houses down there. There's glass and metal in the yards."

Chris and Lisa Wimble are living in an RV parked in their front yard. Before Wednesday's festivities began, neighbors marveled at the fact that the vehicle has a washer and dryer inside.

Still, Wednesday night, the Wimbles and their whole neighborhood were able to gather and not worry about what comes next. They shared apple cider and pizza and looked on as trick-or-treaters approaching the fence marveled at Williams' array of monsters.

"It makes everybody feel like we're all one big community and we're all together," Chris Wimble said. "No matter how bad off we are or down in the dumps, it just makes everybody happy."

Reporter Adam Wagner can be reached at Adam.Wagner@GateHouseMedia.com.

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