Super-sized spookiness: Halloween displays go big for fun, and for charity

Considering how many Halloween decorations Susie and Delbert Long of Latrobe have already put up, you could forgive Delbert for thinking he could sneak a werewolf past his wife — even if it is a dozen feet tall.

“That’s Zeke,” he said with a laugh, waving his arms to get the massive motion-activated werewolf to move.

After buying a 12-foot skeleton just as they started gaining popularity during the pandemic (“That’s Hank,” Delbert said), the Longs’ collection has mushroomed into a full-on skeleton party, complete with green and purple lights and creepy sound effects.

When spooky season rolls around, there are two types people: those who are serious about their Halloween decorating, and everyone else.

The Longs, as well as folks like Murrysville resident Kirk Nicholson, definitely fall into the former group.

“My setup always takes three or four days because I always change my mind a hundred times,” Nicholson said.

Nicholson’s front porch is strung with jack-o-lantern lights the size of actual pumpkins, along with 14 inflatable Minions characters in all manner of costume.

“I installed 11 outlets on the front of the house, so I don’t have to run a mile of extension cords,” he said.

This year, Nicholson had double the work. After his mother-in-law moved in next door, he took over her front porch as well, decking it out with pumpkins and scarecrows.

“She doesn’t want to go as extreme as I do,” he said.

Nicholson lives along a curve in Manor Road, and a small asphalt pad he built to better accommodate the mail carrier is now a spot where passers-by regularly park to get photos of the decorations.

In Latrobe, Susie Long and her neighbors’ decorations attract so many visitors that last year they requested a permit from the city to close down the street on Halloween.

“We end up with 400 or 500 people trick-or-treating,” she said. During an interview Thursday, Oct. 27, at least four cars stopped to take photos of the Longs’ display, which is actually in their neighbors’ yard.

It is also helping to raise money for charity, through the “Skeletons for St. Jude” program. The Longs are among 600 nationwide participants with a sign in front of their decorations that can be scanned with a smartphone, in order to donate to St. Jude Children’s Hospital.

The program raised nearly $160,000 in 2020 and 2021, and has already brought in more than $127,000 this year.

Long started taking part two years ago to honor her granddaughter, who has an autoimmune disease and also does her own charity giving, growing her hair and donating it to the nonprofit Locks of Love to make wigs for people who have lost their hair due to a medical condition.

Other neighbors on Fairmont Street have also joined in.

“It’s fun to do it for the kids,” said Rhonda Anderson. “They’d always complain that I don’t decorate for the holidays.”

They can’t complain now, with a giant spiderweb covering everything but the front porch. Across the street, Joe and Michele Kuba’s front porch is mostly bones, with every animal skeleton under the sun making an appearance, from dragons to monkeys and fish.

“My daughter’s birthday is on Halloween, so we always had Halloween-themed parties with the decorations to go with it,” Michele Kuba said. “Plus I’d buy Joe a new skeleton for his birthday every year. So our collection was always growing.”

Ron Ferri of Plum knows the feeling.

Even as Ferri was building a new house along Saltsburg Road, he couldn’t help putting a spooky spin on it.

“I bought two skeletons last year, and I kept moving them from window to window while the house was being built,” he said. “It was funny, starting to see people mention it on Facebook.”

Ferri is a longtime member of the Dark Attractions and Funhouse Enthusiasts group, which supports and documents fun-houses, dark rides and other illusion attractions.

“My mom always used to take us to haunted houses, and I have friends in Ohio who have done some big haunted-house displays in their yard,” he said.

Following the completion of his house this past summer, Ferri set to work on his Halloween display, decking out the center of his yard with one of the ubiquitous giant skeletons, a gravity-defying witch taking off on her broomstick, and humorous decorations like one skeleton running another over with a push-mower.

Long and Nicholson both said that making the display bigger and better can get a little addicting, not to mention costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Ferri knows that feeling as well.

“The first thing I’m going to need is a bigger barn to store all this stuff,” he said, gesturing to the storage shed at the rear of his property. “I’m looking to expand it, though. I want to keep making it bigger and better unless I start having trouble from the borough.”