Upper Arlington develops interactive Halloween trick-or-treating, haunted houses map

Michelle Stratman loves Halloween.

Stratman and her family, who live in Upper Arlington, have plenty of decorations and have been putting up a multiroom haunted house through their yard and garage: This year's house features a "lucky 13" rooms, including one themed after Tim Burton movies.

Some kids love to go through the haunted house multiple times, so they set up some outdoor couches for parents to relax.

"If there was a way to have a beer fridge that teenagers wouldn't break into, we would," Stratman said with a laugh.

Walking through their haunted house is always free: "We never want people to, like, pay or donate or feel obligated. We just want them to enjoy (it)," Stratman said.

Many of her neighbors know how much she goes all in for Halloween, so they sent her a link to a new feature from the city that crowd sources trick-or-treating spots and haunted houses into an interactive map.

Stratman and dozens of other Halloween fans have opted into an interactive city database for haunted houses and trick-or-treating spots.

How Upper Arlington's GIS department came up with the idea

Residents can opt-in to list their home in an interactive city database, but anyone may use it. People can put in an address, and the program will spit out a list of nearby locations.

Nick Creedon, a GIS analyst for the city, got the idea to make an interactive holiday map when driving around on Christmas Eve and noticing all the holiday decorations.

This program could help link Halloween fans who don’t live in a busy area with trick-or-treaters.

“Some people put a lot of time and effort into decorating, but then they might not get any kids just because of where they're at,” Creedon said. “Now that they're on the map, parents can go out of their way to go to this house to see what it's about, whether it's a haunted house or just for candy.”

He made the interactive application with the city’s mapping software, ArcGIS.

One of the challenges in creating the interactive map was figuring out custom symbols — “something they don’t teach you in school,” Creedon said.

Houses that have opted into the trick-or-treating database are displayed as a jack-o-lantern, but when they appear in the radius of a selected point, the pumpkins glow. Map users can also get directions between the different holiday locations.

'Let's just have fun together': Why Stratman celebrates Halloween

Stratman's haunted house is only open in October and takes a "few weekends" to install. Some neighborhood kids help the family out with putting it up.

An attorney who advocates for children with disabilities, the Stratmans have family all around the U.S. and are rarely in town for Thanksgiving and Christmas — Halloween is the only one holiday for which they decorate.

Anyone can dress up as whatever they want to be on Halloween: scary, fun or whatever people want, she said. Halloween can also bring people together, especially in today's tense political environment.

"We're just so divided. Who cares what your belief is? Let's just have fun together," Stratman said.

Another holiday map is already in the works

"The kids really get into it," Stratman said, adding that it can make adults be more fun.

The GIS department, which started in 2015, makes maps and visualizations for other city departments and for public use: Examples include the city’s capital improvement projects , school district areas and city trees .

The city’s mapping department previously did another map from a survey of people who opted into sharing security footage with law enforcement, but that’s secure information only available to the police department. But they haven’t done anything like this before.

Ross Morrow, the city's GIS administrator, said much of their work is for people in Upper Arlington to use and described the Halloween map as “more of a fun application” created with the intention to “enrich the community.”

Another interactive holiday map is also in the works: they are planning to see how the maps work for Halloween and are also developing another feature for winter holiday decorations. That could include houses as well as some city streets known for collaboratively going above and beyond on holiday décor.

Residents can sign up at this link here and the map is visible at this link.

awinfrey@dispatch.com

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Upper Arlington develops interactive Halloween trick-or-treating, haunted houses map