Matt Knowles is a chemical engineer by day who spends his free time as the caretaker of the Carriage Way Cemetery. For as long as he can remember, he has had a unique passion for Halloween, and was even born on Oct. 30.

“I’ve always loved horror movies. I was trick or treating when I was [16], and I never stopped trick or treating. Never. [Even] when I was 25 and so on,” Knowles said. “And so when I had kids, I was trick or treating [and] I would trick or treat for my kids. I’ve always been very creative so I found this as an outlet for my creativity, [and] I started decorating.”

“When I saw this house, I had this vision of the graveyard. It’s one of the reasons why I bought the house. It started small, and then neighbors would just compliment [and] say, ‘Oh, [I] really like that.’  Then I started making my foam tombstones and I got involved in the local community. There’s a very strong Halloween community. There was The West Coast Haunters convention. I started going to that, taking classes, and then I started teaching classes,” Knowles said. “I used to work in haunted houses as well. I used to volunteer with this group called Creatures of the Night. We did the haunted trail at Mary S. Young, so that’s where I learned some of these kinds of skills.” 

Over time Knowles has expanded his creative abilities, now digitizing some of his most recognizable decorations. 

The massive grave of Victor Vandal was inspired by an event on Oct. 29, 2018. 

“If you’ll notice, there’s no color (in the graveyard) except for the shoe. That’s for a reason. I was asleep in my room, and my wife said ‘Get up! Get up! They’re out there!’” Knowles said. “Crack, crack, crack. So I grabbed my baseball bat and ran down in my underwear, and some teenager(s) had kicked down every tombstone. I just missed him, thank God, because I would have been in jail by now, and the only thing left was a red shoe. They kicked over the tombstone so hard that the guy’s shoe fell off. So he’s a vandal [and] this is dedicated to Victor Vandal. West Linn’s police caught him and I pressed charges and I collected restitution.”

Knowles’ cemetery has become a well-known area of the neighborhood, standing out against his neighbors during Halloween.

“I’ve been doing it long enough (that) these kids have been coming for 10 years to see it since they were born. Kids, they kind of remember certain things. They’ll come and they’ll talk to me, ‘Oh, where’s this?’ Or ‘I remember that ’ or ‘That’s new.’  It’s just fun because it keeps me motivated to make more,” Knowles said. 

Knowles has become a leader and mentor to younger creators by taking on these volunteer roles. Through social media @carriagewaycemetery, he documents and shares his creative process with anyone who wants to learn. 

“I’m a big fan of ‘The Shining,’ one of my favorite movies. The Rite Aid in Gladstone had these, three-and-a-half-foot dolls on sale for five bucks. And I said, ‘Wait a second. Those are the shining twins.’ So I bought two of them, and I bought blue dresses, and I put them at the top of the driveway. That was it. A couple of tombstones, and those two. There’s nothing else in the yard. It terrified people,” Knowles said.

Then both of the dolls eventually disappeared. 

“So the girls are missing, so what are you gonna do? You call the cops and report the missing girl. The West Linn police were like ‘What?’” Knowles said. “‘Well a missing doll.’ Regardless they started looking for the dolls. But then this old woman, [who] kind of reminded me of the old lady in ‘The Shining,’ she had one of the girls.  She had been walking, she’d found one of the girls someone had stolen and thrown in the bushes. West Linn’s finest found her. [The other twin had] everything except the head. That year, I made the one without a head [into] a fountain that disputes blood.  I probably freaked some parents out, I realized that they didn’t want to see blood, and so from then on, there’s no blood in the cemetery.” 

Knowles is a storyteller, not only of his own experiences but also of fabricated local legends such as the spooky Mary S. Young origin story for the haunted trail that takes place at the park annually. Despite his ability to tell captivating stories, he tries to leave the cemetery up to interpretation. 

“Nothing is meant to be necessarily dead, but in limbo. There’s still spirit, it’s up to you. I don’t try not to show violence towards anything. They’re active. [The dolls] are all doing stuff.  The intent is not to horrify people. It’s a little spooky. I love the look in the kid’s eyes, and when they come up,  this sense of wonder comes over. Like ‘We’ve never seen anything like this.’ The kids are small. They don’t know what to be afraid of yet, but they haven’t been taught that. So they’re just so curious about everything and see everything. The goal here is to kind of just get that sense of wonder from people and get their imagination going. I create scenes, you tell the story,” Knowles said.

Knowles is looking for some voluntary help in years to come, for good reason. Reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein and Igor, Dr. Knowles is looking for a helper who shares his passion. 

“In the high school yearbook, I was ‘most likely to be successful,’” Knowles said. “This is my success.”