Marblehead architect Tom Saltsman reached back into childhood for his latest larger-than-life, magical Halloween installation outside his home at 32 Pleasant St.
Saltsman has designed and built a giant, mechanical hermit crab and is creating a tide pool in his driveway, complete with barnacles, seaweed, lighting and sound effects.
Everything in the display is scaled up about 100 times, Saltsman said, including the barnacles, some of which are two feet in diameter.
“It’s inspired by my childhood memories of playing in tide pools,” Saltsman told the Current as he gave this reporter a sneak peek last week. “Tidepools are a childhood fascination.”
Salstman grew up in Connecticut and has fond memories of tide pooling in Old Saybrook and along the Long Island Sound.
“I wanted it to be apolitical,” he said about this year’s installation. “I wanted to focus on the kids, talk to the kids.”
Saltsman built the hermit crab, 10 feet tall and 14 feet wide, from wood and Styrofoam. It has two claws, six legs, several mouth parts, a body, eyes and two sets of antennae. It has eight motors to animate different parts and a pulley system that will move the crab in and out of its shell.
“It’s like a giant puppet,” Saltsman said.
In the past, Saltsman has built incredible scenes including a dragon breathing smoke, a 22-foot-tall grunting gorilla and an 18-foot-tall translucent walking man. He often transforms the inside of his garage to fit the theme and invites people to walk through.
The owner of a design and construction firm, Saltsman has been creating awe-inspiring Halloween pieces for nearly 20 years. It all started when his now-grown daughter was a student at the old Coffin School, and he created a Halloween experience for kids there. This year marks the 10th anniversary of his driveway installations.
Each October, passersby on foot and in cars start slowing down outside Saltsman’s home to check on his latest creation. Last year, he created a scene from 2124 with a large, lit face with expressions and moving eyes, along with a robot, tethered dog and enlarged, bio-engineered mite.
The year before, he created a mythical forest troll in his driveway with an eerie woodland inside his garage. In 2023, he designed and built a 20-foot Egyptian goddess with the head of a cobra and body of a woman.
Saltsman works full time and spends dozens of hours in the evenings and on weekends working on his Halloween projects. He started working on the hermit crab in September with his wife, Brooke Trivas Saltsman, and a handful of loyal friends/volunteers who help him each year, including Jill Dearborn and Tim and Katie Sullivan.
Editor Leigh Blander is an experienced TV, radio and print journalist.
