The house at 7783 Rutland Drive in Mentor may seem like just another ordinary residence in the community for most of the year, but during the Halloween season, it is a major attraction and holiday hotspot for local families. Stacy Ingersoll and her family are in the fourth year hosting a haunted house in their garage and utilizing the neighbor’s carport. With each passing year, the crowd gets bigger approaching Halloween and there are four dates scheduled once again – Oct. 19, 25, 26 and Halloween night. “It started as a joke as in, lets do this, and we decorated the garage and then we decorated some more and our neighbor has a carport and we did the garage with the carport and the garage gets little scarier,” Ingersoll said. “We have had between 300 to 400 people and we get a lot of responses from people on Facebook.” The haunted house on Rutland Drive in Mentor continues to entertain visitors in its fourth year. (Courtesy of Stacy Ingersoll) The haunted house is open from 7 to 9:30 p.m. on select early dates and on Halloween during trick or treat hours There are animatronics and live people in the carport and a 22-by-24-foot garage that takes at least two months to set up and black it out room by room. Ingersoll’s son Tyler is a Mentor High student and said he tells some of his friends and the reaction is always positive. “We had a couple houses around us doing cool Halloween decorations and I said I wanna be one of those houses,” Tyler said. “My mom was talking about haunted houses and maybe we can make one ourselves so we did it. It is really cool and so happy we are not charging because we just want people to have a good Halloween.” The haunted house on Rutland Drive in Mentor continues to entertain visitors in its fourth year. (Courtesy of Stacy Ingersoll) Donations are accepted, but Ingersoll said this was never meant to be a financial endeavor. As far as if it is family friendly, Ingersoll said they have plenty of young kids and families and simply adjust to it. “We can tone it down. Nothing like blood or gore,” Ingersoll said. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes to get through the haunted house, single file, slowly and safely. The haunted house on Rutland Drive in Mentor continues to entertain visitors in its fourth year. (Courtesy of Stacy Ingersoll) As for the reaction from those visiting, there is a reason the family is continuing and growing into a fourth year. “A lot of people will record the experience and say how amazing it is, live streaming on their phone, sharing on their phone,” Ingersoll said. “A lot of people love it and tell us how much they love it so they know where to come during Halloween. They say, ‘I wonder if that Mentor house is doing the haunted house and we are it. Did you get to the house? We are the house.” Ingersoll said the family loves the community “and they have so much fun.”