Excerpt from the Yellow Springs News
On Halloween nights in recent years, Yellow Springs resident and Wright State University French professor Jean-Michel Lamoine has made it his mission to bring a taste of magic to the holiday’s festivities, delighting local trick-or-treaters with an immersive experience that evoked the world of the “Harry Potter” books and film series.
In 2020, the pandemic brought the magic to a temporary halt — but this Halloween, after a two-year hiatus, Lamoine will again turn the garage of his East Davis Street home into an immersive experience for burgeoning young witches and wizards, offering detailed decorations, interactive displays and treats aplenty.
Lamoine’s love of Harry Potter began when he was teaching in Oklahoma. During this time, a student recommended that he read the series. When he picked up the first book, he said he was immediately enthralled.
“After I was halfway done with the first one, I knew I was going to continue [reading the series]. So, I got to the second one, and I was like everybody else, waiting for the third one, waiting for the next one,” Lamoine said.
After Lamoine moved to Yellow Springs in 2015 and handed out candy for two years, he started noticing something a bit different about his Halloween experience: Fewer and fewer people were at his doorstep. He talked with his neighbor, and they both came to a consensus.
“We [were] kind of miffed because we didn’t have as many people as we used to,” Lamoine said. “We looked at each other and said, ‘We have to do something.’”
And Lamoine did do something: He started the “Harry Potter” project in 2018 as a way to do something fun and creative while the seasons change — and to mitigate the feelings that often come with that change.
