AUBURN — Residents are ready with candy. The staff is ready with a haunted house, complete with a monster under the bed and a graveyard scene.

From 5 to 6:30 p.m., trick-or-treaters ages 4 to 10 are invited to show off their costumes, score some candy and get scared at Clover Health Care’s haunted house at the 440 Minot Ave. nursing home.

“This is the first time we’ve done this in years,” said Donna Rousseau, director of resident relations. “We’re inviting trick-or-treaters in. It’s a great opportunity for residents to do something they used to do when they lived at home.”

Young trick-or-treaters are invited to come in one entrance and go to a large common area, where residents will pass out treats. The children can go through the facility to the other end and visit a second large living space, where more residents will be waiting with candy.

Children will then be invited to go through a haunted house.

One room has a creepy, abandoned home with an all-white theme. “There’s sheets all over the furniture. A small toddler doll painted white. We’ll have a ghost mom rocking a baby, an old-fashioned baby carriage that lights up,” Rousseau said.

Another part of the haunted house is a child’s bedroom “with enormous monster hands coming from under the bed.”

Another station will feature a mad scientist, and in another, trick-or-treaters can walk through greenery into a graveyard, complete with a grave digger and a wooden coffin. “We found the coffin at a yard sale,” Rousseau said. A staff person will play a vampire.

Other Halloween events show there’s plenty of spirit in Lewiston-Auburn:

* The Auburn Mall will host a Halloween costume contest at 6 p.m., along with trick-or-treating at mall stores. Registration for the contest begins at 5 p.m.

* Peter Geiger of Brentwood Avenue, Lewiston’s master of Halloween, has outdone himself this year, buying $3,000 worth of candy to hand out. Geiger is proud of the fact that so far, he’s never run out. Saying Halloween is his favorite holiday, he gives out the big bars, and more than one, to those who know the password.