Halloween Season Starts Now
Halloween lands on a Saturday this year. One neighbor has been getting ready since September 1.
The light changes first. Sometime in the middle of September, the afternoons go gold, and the fog starts arriving with more conviction, and the pumpkins turn up at the grocery store next to the last of the summer stone fruit. Then the porches begin. A skeleton on a stoop on Cortland. Cobwebs on a Folsom Street railing. Somebody’s inflatable cat, already fully committed, six weeks early.
If it feels early, consider Jon Shafran, who thinks you’re running late.
Jon runs Presidio Frights, turning Victorian homes across Presidio Heights, Pacific Heights, and Laurel Heights into serious Halloween productions. In his household, September 1 is the official start of the season — though he’ll note that the stores beat him to it, stocking shelves back in late August. By the end of September, he’s usually booked solid and turning people away, including in neighborhoods he can’t reach yet. And this year, with October 31 falling on a Saturday, he’s bracing for the biggest turnout he’s seen.
Where it started
Jon grew up on the west side of Los Angeles, in a neighborhood thick with film and television people. Come October, some of those neighbors — professional stage designers, working artists — would convert their front yards into full haunted houses. He was thirteen, and the experience was roughly half thrill and half genuine terror. That combination stuck.
He’s been collecting decorations ever since: thirty years of it. Eventually, the collection outgrew hobby status and became a business, built for homeowners who love the idea of an elaborate display but don’t have the time, storage space, or technical know-how to pull one off. Jon does the design, the setup, the storage, and — the part nobody thinks about until November 1 — the teardown.
Spooky beats gory
His working theory, refined over many Octobers: pitch it so the little kids can walk past, then layer in the more intense stuff for everyone else. Straight gore doesn’t land. Classic monsters and a good spider will outperform blood every time.
For all that, he’s not much of a costume person himself. Off the clock, he’s likelier to go as a handyman or a plumber — something he can actually get work done in.
The most neighborly holiday
Here’s the part that sticks with you. Ask Jon what Halloween is for, and he doesn’t talk about the business. He talks about the street. Most holidays pull people inward, toward family and the dining room table. Halloween pushes everyone out onto the sidewalk, where you end up talking to the person three doors down whose name you’ve been meaning to learn since spring.
Bernal already knows this. Halloween on Cortland closes the street to cars for an early-ending, family-friendly night, and it works for exactly the reason Jon describes: for a few hours, the neighborhood is a place you walk around in rather than past.
So put the skeleton out. You’ve got six weeks.
How a Haunted Childhood Became a Career – The Frightmaster of Presidio Frights
Lend a (Skeleton) Hand
Here’s the thing about a night that feels effortless: somebody made it that way. Cortland doesn’t close itself to cars. The costume contest doesn’t judge itself. The barricades, the treat stations, the people in bright vests making sure a four-year-old dressed as a fire truck gets across the street — that’s neighbors volunteering.
Halloween on Cortland was started by Greening Projects in 2024 with a simple goal: a safe, silly, genuinely magical night for every little monster and superhero on the hill, and a stronger neighborhood on November 1. It runs car-free from Bennington to Folsom, with the costume contest from 5 to 8 PM.
If Jon’s right that Halloween is the holiday that gets you out onto the sidewalk with your neighbors, this is the shortest path to it — and a shift is a few hours, not a season.
Not available that night? Donating keeps the pumpkins glowing. Questions: info@greeningprojects.org or (415) 218-5352.
Event details and trick-or-treat routes · Instagram @halloween.on.cortland
Presidio Frights PresidioFrights.com · Instagram @presidiofrights · contact@presidiofrights.com
Jon joined Mike and Tracy on the Bernal Connect podcast.
Also this fall
A Night of Mexican Spirits & Wine Tasting — a fundraiser for Ogden Avenue Gardens. Tequila, mezcal, and Mexican wines with small bites to match. 📅 Saturday, October 17 · 🕕 6:00–9:00 PM · 📍 Baukunst, 433 Cortland Ave
Mike Doherty serves as Chief Experience Officer at Greening Projects, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming underutilized urban spaces into vibrant green areas
