Waterlooville man who battled mental health challenges creates spectacularly spooky light show for charity
After battling his own mental health challenges, a man has poured thousands of pounds into creating a spectacularly spooky light show for charity.
Liam Mcerlean has spent the last seven months creating a major light show for Halloween to raise money for Men's Minds Matter after overcoming his own struggles with depression.
The 24-year-old, from Waterlooville, said that his family has “always gone quite big for Halloween over the past few years”, but he wanted to ramp it up a notch this spooky season.
After dedicating hundreds of hours to the cause, Liam’s family home, in Ireland Way, has been adorned with over 3,000 individually programmable LEDs.
He said: “I had a bit of a rough time at the end of the last year and the support I received was absolutely amazing and it’s honestly quite shocking when you speak to the people that work at these charities to hear there is no funding.
“I felt so alone and didn’t know who to talk to or where to go but having support from charities saved me, and I said to myself that I wanted to be a mental health advocate for men to say it’s okay to not be okay, and it’s okay to cry because if you don’t let it out, it will just get worse.
“It is a year ago today that I tried to take my life and put myself on a bridge and it was the fantastic work from the Waterlooville police that helped me down.”
The light show, which has been synchronised to music, will officially launch on October 17 with two shows every night, one at 6.30pm and one at 7.30pm, until Halloween.
The Mcerlean family will also be giving out free popcorn, candy floss and hot chocolate to all visitors as well as a treat bag on Halloween night to celebrate the show.
Liam added: “Unfortunately we like to go big or go home - we have paid for everything and all of the money raised for the charity will go to the charity.
“We’ve spent thousands of pounds on creating this light show - and it’s taken me about seven months. We are also going to be doing Christmas as well so I am currently doing Christmas songs on the computer - we are in this for the long run.”
Men’s Minds Matter is a mental health and suicide prevention charity that offers support to men who are struggling with their mental health through a range of research.