Kristy Oxenham will don her late husband's Darth Vader costume this Halloween as she opens their elaborately decorated Auckland home to the public for the first time to raise money for blood cancer.
Photojournalist Jason Oxenham, who died of multiple myeloma in April, had bought the costume in China in 2025 and had been looking forward to wearing it at a Halloween fundraiser the couple postponed last year.
Kristy said her husband had one plan for the night, involving daughters Gemma, Holly and Ruby.
"He wanted to walk around all of Halloween going to our three girls, 'I am your father.' Honestly, that's what he talked about."
She had planned to put the costume on a mannequin but changed her mind in the last few days.
"He was so excited, and he just gets right into the whole character of things. I just wanted to do that for him, so it wasn't wasted."
Shanghai and back
Jason spent 30 years photographing New Zealand for the Herald and Stuff. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer, in 2020. After funded treatment options in New Zealand ran out, the couple travelled to Shanghai for CAR T-cell therapy.
His first two infusions failed, but the third put him into remission. Once the couple returned to New Zealand, about 30 photographers donated images to a fundraising exhibition for his treatment.
Kristy and Jason had talked about running Halloween as a blood cancer fundraiser.
"It kind of goes hand in hand, Halloween, blood," she said.
They secured sponsors for a planned 2025 event while in China, then postponed it when they returned home. Jason relapsed in early 2026 and died less than two months after returning from another round of treatment in Shanghai.
Monday was six months since his death, and the family has already marked Father's Day and his birthday without him.
"Halloween's going to be a big thing," Kristy said.
She said this year's event would be about "love and paying it forward", with raising money for myeloma something she and Jason had talked about often. She hopes it will help make treatment like Jason’s available here, so patients no longer have to travel overseas for it.
"That would be really important for him, and that's why he did all the media and stuff around his fundraising, was also to bring awareness to that."
A cobweb on the gate
The tradition began around 2010 at the family's former Mount Albert home, where a cobweb on the gate signalled to trick-or-treaters that they were welcome.
Each year, the decorations grew until hundreds of children visited on a good night. When the family moved in 2015, Jason suggested hosting a Halloween party for their daughters and their friends instead.
Kristy built a tunnel from garden arches leading to the party room, while Jason filmed the increasingly elaborate set-ups and posted them to Facebook.
"It just got bigger and bigger and bigger every year, and every year we'd be like, 'Oh, what can we do different?'" she said.
About six years ago, Kristy built her first major prop, a giant spider made from pool noodles. This year, she finally completed a two-metre stone archway carved from polystyrene and painted to look like rock, using materials that had sat in the garage for years.
Severed limbs and a 2.7m clown
The house has taken over family life in recent weeks, with a 2.7-metre clown in the lounge, the Night King from Game of Thrones in the shower, and the toilet transformed into the Iron Throne.
"Sometimes when I turn some of the stuff on that jumps at you, I forget that it's on and I walk past it and it jumps out at me," Kristy said.
Severed limbs surround the pool, where a great white shark lurks. The couple bought the props from a man who had built them for a zombie run.
Kristy Oxenham is opening her Mount Albert home to the public for the first time, carrying on a beloved tradition with her late husband Jason while raising money for Myeloma New Zealand. (Source: Supplied)
"Here we are walking down the road, carrying these pieces of limbs with bloody stumps hanging off them," she laughed.
Everything is boxed and labelled in the garage when it comes down.
"There's not that many people that have a box labelled 'severed hands and limbs' in the garage," she said.
"It is kind of embarrassing when you sell something on Trade Me and they pick it up from there. People are giving you a bit of a side eye, like you're serial killers or something."
Stranger Things at home
This year, Kristy and one of their daughters transformed the dining room into the Upside Down from Stranger Things, a project Jason had always wanted to tackle.
"He would have just been so stoked that she did that," Kristy said.
Friends, members of a grief group for people who have lost a spouse, and the couple's three daughters have helped with the set-up.
Although friends and family have seen the displays, this is the first time the public has been invited inside.
"When they physically come here and they're immersed in it, they're like, 'Whoa, it's way more than I even expected,'" she said.
"Some people think Halloween's dark, but for us it's always been about pure joy and creativity."
Tickets to walk through the house are available through Humanitix, with sessions capped at 100 people. Visitors can buy a ticket, donate, or both, with proceeds going to Myeloma New Zealand. Sessions run on the hour today, three times on Saturday and twice late on Sunday afternoon, with each visitor receiving lollies, a party favour and a family photo.
The work has brought moments of sadness, particularly when Kristy has had to take on tasks Jason once handled, but it has also kept her close to him.
"I almost feel like he was with me doing it. He'd be really proud," she said.
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