Edinburgh Halloween: Donations pour in after Sighthill home's Halloween donation box stolen

An Edinburgh family has been consoled by online donations after the theft

The Halloween home featured in the Evening News last week was targeted by callous thieves who stole the collection box which people had donated to – raising money for the Sick Kids Hospital.

Leanne McCallum’s house on Sighthill Drive is the talk of the neighbourhood every Halloween, with her spooky props and decorations including Michael Myers and scary It clown Pennywise, raising money for charity for the past five years, as well as delighting visitors young and old.

However, after going to a wedding reception on Saturday evening (October 29), the family returned to discover that despite being secured to the fence, thieves had managed to rip off the donation box and later open it, with the remains of the box later discovered at the nearby Union Canal. "It was just awful,” said Leanne.

The house on Sighthill Drive, which has brought joy to so many people this Halloween period, was targeted by callous thieves on Saturday night.

"We have been in the house most of the time, every night. We were going to a wedding reception on Saturday night for a couple of hours and decided to leave everything on in the garden for people to enjoy. When we got back at about half ten the donation box was gone.

"It’s really disheartening. Just horrible. My husband, who is a joiner, had secured the box on the fence. Even the lid was screwed on tight. That’s why I don’t think it was kids, the force they would have needed to open it.

"I feel like we should have checked it before we left, but there has never been an issue before. We had been emptying the box and taken the money in. But Saturday night was very busy, with lots of people who saw the Evening News story coming to visit all day. We were busy on Sunday also because of the story. A lot of people were saying they are coming back today, for Halloween day, which is nice.”

After the disappointment of Saturday night, the family is looking forward to the Halloween celebrations this evening, after being cheered up by the reaction of locals to the theft, with an online fudraiser quickly raising more money than what was taken.

Leanne said: "We are all set for tonight, we are not going to let this beat us. After I posted online about this happening and saw all the messages of support I decided to set-up a Just Giving page yesterday morning. By this morning there was already £235 donated! So that in a way is a silver lining. We maybe wouldn’t have got that amount of money if the donation box hadn’t been taken.

"We have also had people knocking on the door to give us donations. And somebody last night handed us two big bags of sweets to give to the kids, because they heard about what happened. It definitely restores your faith in people. I was so angry on Saturday night. I felt really low. But now I feel a lot better. I think we have now surpassed what would have been in there.

"We haven’t put another collection box up. I have put up a sign up on the fence telling people to donate through out letterbox or online.”