House lights up for Halloween

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) - If 2020 hasn’t scared you enough, try setting up 23,605 LED lights to brighten up Halloween.

“Well, there’s a lot to it,” said NSWC PC Electrical Engineer Bill Porter.

That’s what you’ll find at this special display in Bay County.

“It’s definitely not something you can buy from a Home Depot or a Lowe’s,” said Porter. “You buy the cutouts, you buy the lights, and you do all the manual labor to push the lights through the cutouts. It’s actually a funny thing to earn a badge of honor by getting blisters from pushing all the lights through the cut-outs.”

Porter says the light shows started because engineering is in his blood.

“As an engineer, sometimes I’m not satisfied at work, so I bring it home and do my own projects at home,” said Porter. “The light show is a way for me to vent.”

Porter has a network of computers in his front yard that feed data to the individual lights to help choreograph his displays.

“I can take any light or any prop and make it any color I want,” said Porter. “Then the software takes that ability and does a lot of the effects across all of the lights out there and all of the props out there.”

The display takes three full weekends for Porter to put out in his front yard, but he says the work is worth it.

“I enjoy the thought that I’m basically bringing a little bit of Disneyland magic to a place where some people may not be able to go to Disneyland,” said Porter. “Some kids don’t always get to go to Disneyland, so the fact they can drive down here and see it is pretty cool to me.”

While his display may be as cool as Frankenstein’s monster, Porter says it’s always been pandemic safe.

“It was always sort of engrained in this that people stay in their cars, I actually have an FM transmitter, so they just use the radios in their cars to listen to music,” said Porter. “Then you just sort of chill out on the road and watch the show out your window.”

If you do not live in this neighborhood, your last day to see the display will be Friday 10/30, because the neighborhood will be closed to vehicular traffic on Halloween. The light show is at 309 Brynn Ct., Panama City, Fl, 32408.

Porter also wanted to mention the light show does not noticeably affect his electricity bill, since the LED lights only draw about three incandescent bulbs worth of energy.

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