Halloween is a great time for people to express themselves and festively decorate their homes. The problem is that some people absolutely love Halloween and decorate their house to the extreme. These extreme cases can be frightening to children, disturbing to adults and downright annoying to neighbors. Then again, for those who love Halloween, these people may be amazing neighbors. What do you think? Did these people go too far or not far enough? Let us know in the comments!
10. James Creighton
When James Creighton’s grandmother passed away from cancer in 2009, he came up with an unusual way to honor her; he decided to create a gory Halloween display in front of his home in Stevenage, England. For years, he had the display up without much trouble. That was until 2013 when he was contacted by the police. It turns out that his display was getting too gory; specifically, there was a disemboweled torso that looked like it came from a Cannibal Corpses’ album cover (you’ll have to Google that for yourself). The police said that the display was too intense and it was frightening children. The charity which Creighton supports also contacted him and told him to tone it down.
Creighton relented and put the corpse on a barbecue at the side of the house. He also said that after getting the complaint, he received triple the amount of donations that he collected the year before.
9. The Reamer Family
Leslie Reamer of Midlothian, Virginia, has a “bigger is better” attitude when it comes to decorating for Halloween. On her property she had a graveyard, a zombie scientist who was holding his own detached head and a number of inflatable decorations.
While there were a lot of decorations, that wasn’t exactly what bothered the neighbors. What got to them was the Reamer’s 2013 display that featured a re-creation of an execution chamber that had a dummy with a sack over its head in a convict’s uniform. Leslie said her husband spent hours working on the scene which includes a fuse box and straps for the chair. One unidentified neighbor said that they didn’t like sitting at the red light near the Reamers’ home with their children because the children asked sensitive questions about the body in the chair. The Reamers didn’t want to offend anyone and refused to take the execution room down.
8. Joe D’Auria
A place with a blood stained human-sized fanged rabbit, decapitated heads impaled on hooks, and zombie babies in cages may sound like the setting of a horror movie, but these are actual decorations in front of Joe D’Auria’s house in Brookline, Pennsylvania. His front yard is lined with dog cages and inside each one is some kind of ghoulish creature. Then his front porch is full of life sized horror creatures and his property line is littered with fake bloody limbs.
Neighbors think that D’Auria’s decorations are too extreme for a family neighborhood. D’Auria, on the other hand, proclaims himself the “King of Halloween” and says he gets more compliments than negative comments about his front lawn of horrors.
7. The Barrett Family
Starting in 2012, the Barrett family of Parma, Ohio, started decorating their house in a truly frightening manner; they used lifelike dummies to create grotesque scenes of torture and murder. For their 2015 decorations, they had a body nailed to an inverted cross with syringes stuck in its neck. Another dummy was bound with rope and wrapped in plastic. A third doll was childlike and it was impaled on a spike and there was a sword stabbed into its throat.
People in the neighborhood were upset with the decorations, especially considering the Barretts lived near an elementary school and the gory display upset the children. The Barretts said it was just meant to be fun, but after setting up their decorations for Halloween 2015, Vicki Barrett started to get some unwanted attention. One night she saw people gathering on her lawn after midnight and this unsettled her. So fearing for her own children’s safety, she took down the display.
6. James Faulk
Scary imagery used at Halloween is often rooted in fiction and the imaginary, but ghosts and monsters weren’t scary enough for James Faulk, who lives in the Dallas area. In 2013, Fault thought the best way to scare people was to use a real life situation, specifically the Ebola scare that was rampant at the time. In front of his house, Faulk placed biohazard barrels and his lawn was marked off with caution tape. Then he dressed up in a biohazard suit and walked around with a clipboard.
Faulk claimed that it was all in good fun and meant to be unsettling. Others argued that Ebola is a real disease, and at the time there were cases of it in the Dallas area. They thought that Faulk using that theme was exploitative and in bad taste.
5. Joyce Draganosky
It is quite arguable that if someone has to explain to a newspaper reporter that they “aren’t going to hurt children” while defending their Halloween decorations, they probably have gone too far. That is exactly what 52-year-old Joyce Draganosky of Brooklyn said when talking to the New York Post about her gory decorations.
So why would she have to make it clear she wasn’t going to harm children? Well, that is because her decorations are mutilated baby dolls. Some of them have knives stabbed in their foreheads. Others are skewered with various sharp objects or have nails driven through their head. Many are covered in blood and are dismembered in some way.
Draganosky claims that children in the neighborhood love the dolls and encourages her to use more blood and to make it even gorier.
4. Johnnie Mullins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zabbEe8NbVQ
What if you were walking around your neighborhood and you came across a dead body on someone’s driveway and the garage door was splattered with blood? While this sounds like the opening of an episode of Law and Order, it actually happened to the neighbors of Johnnie Mullins who lives in Mustang, Oklahoma. Mullins, a father of two, created the described murder scene for Halloween 2013. The scene gave his neighbors quite the start and someone even called 911. The police and fire department responded and, of course, found out it was just a dummy.
Mullins says that he wasn’t doing anything illegal, in fact, after the police visited, he added another body, making it look like its head had been driven over by his truck.
3. Kevin Judd
In 2008, Kevin Judd first set up 12,000 lights on his house in Riverside, California, and synchronized the lights to music. His shows were half an hour long and he did one every weeknight and three on Saturday night using songs with a lot of bass. In 2011, the video of his synchronized pumpkins made from lights singing “Party Rock” by LMFAO went viral and his house started to attract 2,000 people a night. Neighbors were upset because the influx of people would block up the road, people would park wherever they found a spot and they would trespass on people’s lawns to watch the show.
In March 2012, the homeowner’s association banned Judd’s light show, but Judd went ahead and kept doing it. In 2014, it was shut down by the police until he got a special permit to play the music. And despite some complaints from neighbors, he already has his 2015 lights ready to go; bigger and brighter than ever.
2. “Matt” from Butler, New Jersey
If nothing else, Halloween really should be about children having fun, but for better or worse, there are some people who look at Halloween as an avenue for free speech. One such person is a man, only identified as “Matt,” who decided to use his decorations to make a political statement. On September 11, 2015, Matt installed his Halloween display on his front yard of his home in Butler, New Jersey. The display contains President Barack Obama dressed as an ISIS member while wielding a bloody machete. Then he has a dummy dressed as an American soldier being hanged with a noose with a plastic bag over its head and an American flag tied around his neck. Finally, there is a burned corpse in a cage and there are bloody body parts throughout the display.
Matt says he understands that people may not like his display, and think it’s Anti-American, but he says it’s his right to showcase any decorations he wants.
1. Nick Thomas
There is no denying that Nick Thomas’ Halloween display at his suburban Chicago home is impressive. It is a large light show that is synchronized to music by artists like System of a Down, AC/DC, Queen, Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga. The effects of the lights make it look like neon skulls and monstrous faces are actually singing the songs. Besides the lights, the yard is a crowded cemetery with plenty of skeletons and ghouls.
The problem is that the setup is too impressive for some of his neighbors. Besides just having flashing lights, loud music and a cluttered yard, the house also attracts too much attention. In 2014, the house had 35,000 people visit it. Since it is a suburb, there are plenty of children around, especially on Halloween night, and the house brings a lot of unwanted traffic to the neighborhood, which creates a potentially dangerous situation. Neighbors have asked Thomas to celebrate Halloween, but not to excess because Halloween decorations should never put children in danger.
Robert Grimminck is a Canadian freelance writer. You can friend him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, follow him on Pinterest or visit his website.
2 Comments
What the hell, these people would be awesome as neighbors. I live in a neighborhood where literally no one decorates for Halloween that’s worse then someone going extreme for it.
I think at first it would be cool. But then day after day, year after year, it would get annoying.