Lundahl Middle School teacher takes costumes to next level

Halloween brings out the best in Fred Kaiser. Or the worst. It just depends on whom you ask.

Kaiser has been creating elaborate costumes and bringing them to life for almost three decades to the joy – and terror – of students and faculty at Lundahl Middle School in Crystal Lake, where he is a PE teacher.

“There are a few that are petrified [by the costumes and characters],” he said. “Some take the day off school because they are so freaked out.”

Kaiser has been crazy about Halloween since he was a kid.

“When I was in grade school, my parents got me a professional makeup kit that had silicone and other things in it,” Kaiser said. “And I started monkeying around with it.”

Through school and college, he continued to hone his abilities. In 1988, Kaiser was a new teacher, and that Halloween he decided to bring his hobby into the classroom.

“I was sitting at school and thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great to dress up?’ ” he said. “My parents asked me if I was really going to do it.”

The costume and makeup he wore to school that year was of an old man.

“I was 23, and I made myself look like I was in my 80s,” he said. “I played the part with the walk, the cane, the dress. It’s interesting how you fool so many people.”

He said some teachers absolutely love it, but others are creeped out, such as the year he dressed as a mime and wouldn’t talk, acting out scenes to communicate. But Kaiser said his annual tradition has inspired more teachers to go to school in costumes, as well. He soon gained a reputation, and a following.

“It started as a joke, and now everyone is wondering what the costume will be,” he said.

He never shares his plans before Halloween, but he added a section to his website, www.physedfred.com, to keep parents and former students informed of his latest creations.

Kaiser believes the costumes represent something more than just dressing up.

“At school, what’s neat is that [the costumes are] an expression of what you can do with art and how you can become the creature or costume,” he said. “It’s self-expression. It’s OK to be a little different.”

He said the students are at an in-between age where they want to be accepted but also want to be their own person. Teacher can show by example that it is OK to be yourself, even if being yourself means, one day a year, being a zombie vampire or a woman who rides a motorcycle.

“If the teacher can do it, they think, ‘why can’t I?’ ” he said.

He has rarely missed a Halloween.

“I missed a couple of years because I was out of town. [Teachers would] tell the school kids [I] was the Invisible Man,” he said. “And the kids were looking for me!”

He does all of his own makeup and makes every costume himself. The makeup alone can take 3 to 4 hours to apply. Kaiser said he wakes up by 4 a.m. every Halloween to get ready.

He alternates themes each year between scary and non-scary because he said it keeps him from falling into a design rut.

Some of his scary costumes have included a clown, a scarecrow that had him walking on stilts and a monster that had him gluing fangs on his face to look like he had several rows of teeth.

Kaiser starts thinking about his next costume about a year in advance.

“I’ll see something in a movie, and that will inspire me,” he said. “Say I’m watching a vampire movie and there’s a creature there, I’ll see an aspect that inspires me. Maybe it’s a cockeyed mouth. I’ll build off that.”

There are some years where he doesn’t know what he’s going to be a week before Halloween, and some years where he’ll have the next four years’ worth of ideas lined up.

He said he’s always keeping his eyes open for things to inspire him. He’ll find something from a hardware store and build off it, or he’ll find a piece of burlap and that will serve as inspiration.

“I go off what my mom used to do – make my own costumes,” he said. “The thrift stores are great places to get things.”

His favorite costume as a kid was something that was like the Heat Miser from the 1974 TV show “A Year Without Christmas.”

“It was the first real mask I ever had. It was latex, and that was unheard of at the time,” Kaiser said. “I felt it was cool to wear the costume.”

For the first time this year, Kaiser will not be building the haunted garage he has created at his home since his kids were little. He said it had been a neighborhood activity that would draw 200-300 people each year, but his kids are at an age where they no longer want to do it. Like with his costumes, he enjoyed immersing others in the frightful story with him.

“We would have football players come through at the door and say, ‘No, we’re not doing this!’ ” Kaiser said. “I like Halloween because it is great to get a raw reaction out of people, the genuine reaction that is awesome or the scare. It’s harmless. You get to see the kids experience it,” Kaiser said.

He also has another commitment – printing Cubs t-shirts.

Kaiser owns ThinkInk printing in Crystal Lake and he was contacted by a t-shirt manufacturer to print Cubs National League Championship Series t-shirts that are sold around the U.S.

“We’ve been printing non-stop, something like in the thousands [of shirts],” he said. “We’re printing as fast as we can. I’m not sure where they’re being sold. We’re just printing them. We’ve got our nose to the grindstone to get them done.”