A Halloween Decor Crossover: Dead Man’s Party Meets Psycho Killer
A deep dive into the vision behind a specific display of Halloween decorations, what they’re composed of and seek to convey
This year for Halloween, I plan to decorate my house the same way my family’s done it since I was a kid. For many years, we’ve collected spooky decorations, a fraction of which came from my mom. In the elementary school she worked in, teachers would transform classrooms into mini haunted houses for students, and my mom was able to keep many supplies. One includes a cardboard coffin painted black with “RIP” splattered in red down the middle; the centerpiece that we build our decorations around.
First we string purple LED spider lights along the porch railings, and cobwebs along the brick walls. My dad turns on the fog machine and strobe lights in the corner while my brother and I carve jack ‘o’ lanterns inspired by the creepy scarecrow face in Sleepy Hollow (1999). We then place each one down our front steps and light a candle in them before kids begin trick-or-treating. I stick skull heads on plastic rods and scatter them along the flower beds and driveway. The coffin rests in the middle of the porch. Typically, we lift the cover off just a tad and leave a bony hand creeping out.
Behind it, the porch chairs and table are set for a dead man’s party. Two skeletons occupy the chairs—gray bones and lifeless eyes watching the children who approach for candy. We lay cotton around the skeletons’ feet and hands, to resemble cobwebs. Beside them is another skeleton that we dress up to look like Michael Meyers from Halloween (1978). We put a black sweater and pants on the bony figure, and place the infamous white mask, from an old costume, round its head. A candelabra adorns the table between the guests.
Our doorway becomes a homage to the horror film classic, The Shining (1980). A plastic severed arm, plaid-sleeved, drapes over the top of the closed door. The hand points down to the middle of the door where we tape a photo of Jack Torrance, the film’s crazed killer. It’s the notorious scene where Jack pokes his head through the door, axe-wielding, and shouts, “Here’s Johnny!” Below it, we also paint a banner that reads REDRUM, paralleling the cryptic messages the son encounters in the movie. Finally, from a bluetooth radio in the front entrance, we cue The Shining’s main score: an eerie, haunting instrumental heard during the opening scene.
Along my street, I see my neighbours’ decorations. Villainous smiles carved into pumpkins; fake cauldrons; scarecrows; inflatable ghosts, monsters, and skeletons gathered in a danse macabre on the lawns…glaring onto passerbys.
Like previous Halloweens, the eerie music from The Shining filters through my open door onto the silent sidewalks; the kids have gone trick-or-treating by now, finishing their rounds in the subdivision. I assess my porch setup: “dead man’s party” meets “psycho killer,” I guess. Mist settles on the streets, traces of rain glittering on the pavement under the yellowish-orange streetlamps. The trees tremble in a chilly wind. I blow out the candles in the jack ‘o’ lanterns, leaving whatever spirits are left to roam the night of Hallow’s Eve.
