Fourteen-year-old Ted Lahey has turned his family’s front yard on Pine Ridge Road into a Halloween face-off between a life-sized pirate ship and castle. Ted, a freshman at Newton South High School, has been designing and building the elaborate display largely from scratch since last year. The first thing he built was the boarded-up window about three years ago, which made him realize he wanted to continue to build things for decoration instead of just buying them.
“I tried to make it better and better,” Ted told Fig City News as he pointed out elements of his creation. “I dreamed up the ship two years ago.”
The Pirate Ship
Ted first built the pirate ship in the summer of 2024 when he was 13, starting in July and finishing by October. The ship is about 35 feet long and 25 feet tall, anchored in the ground with concrete. It includes a mermaid skeleton as a figurehead, a pirate in the crow’s nest at the top of the mast, a pirate manning the steering wheel, and fog cannons he built himself using “Sonotube, foam, PVC pipe, and a pool noodle.”
He began by constructing the wooden frame of the ship in his backyard. His mother, Kirsten Lahey, said she did not foresee how big it would be until one day when she looked outside.
“I looked out in the backyard, and the frame was just enormous,” she said. “Once it was that big, he had to keep going.”
When the time came to move it, Ted and his dad Edward disassembled the structure, moved it to their front yard, and reassembled it. Initially, neither Kirsten or Edward thought it was going to fit.
Edward, an oral surgeon, helped with some of the heavy lifting and engineering. The rest, Ted designed and built himself.
“When the ship was up, I was like, I should make a castle and have them in a bottle,” Ted said.
The Castle
Ted constructed the castle over this past summer. Once again, he did the wood framing in the backyard before moving it to the front.
For the exterior, he cut foam insulation boards into bricks, and torched them with starter fluid to create a burnt stone texture.
The castle features turrets, a treasure chest, a captured pirate in jail, and skeleton knights guarding the gates. There is even a pirate with a crossbow at the top of one of the turrets.
One rainy day, Ted – armed with a crow bar and a hammer – deconstructed a pallet of wood from Home Depot to transform into the treasure chest. Then he sprayed expansion foam on top and added lights and gold coins.
He worked into the night during the summer, with a headlamp, to have the structure ready for October. He worked tirelessly to make something worthwhile for all the kids that come to visit it at Halloween.
A Neighborhood Tradition
As Kirsten and Ted spoke to Fig City News, a car stopped, with kids staring in awe at the display. The Laheys’ home has become a beloved neighborhood stop. “I love seeing all the smiles it brings,” Ted said. Many children visit in costumes, and even a nearby preschool has made it a field trip tradition for Halloween.
“There’s a little kid from the house down the street who walked down one night to say goodnight to the pirates,” Kirsten said.
That neighborhood kid has returned to keep up the routine ever since. “It’s very sweet,” Kirsten said.
“A lot of people say, ‘We came last year and didn’t know if you’d do it again,’” Ted said. “It makes it worth it.”
Ted’s love for building started years ago with small decorations and grew into large-scale carpentry projects.
“When you’re working on it in the backyard, it’s hard because no one sees it,” Ted said. “But when it’s in the front yard, it’s so worth it.”
