Welcome, my pretties: Neighborhoods turn into Halloween haunts
Our fascination for skeletons runs deep in this town.
They are crawling out of our front yards, loitering on our porches and lurking in our trees.
Sometimes, we also might see in our neighborhoods a giant spider or a ghost, Chucky or the Corpse Bride, maybe a tombstone or a cauldron or a coffin in the grass.
To trick-or-treat on Halloween night is no longer enough. Community residents now use their lawn as an eerie display for the entire Halloween season, like Christmas lights and Santa Clause, only with the sounds of chainsaws and screams.
And we love it.
“Halloween is not my obsession, it is my expression,” says Jana Keller, who hosts “Grandma Lu’s Hallow” every year in her front yard off 37th Street and Minnesota Avenue. She welcomes up to 4,000 visitors who lurk and play and participate in her “haunt” every year. “We are just a family who loves Halloween and want to keep its traditions alive for our community.”
We visited “Grandma Lu’s Hallow,” trying not to look too closely into the bleeding eyes of a vintage haunted doll. You can visit this weekend, too.
We also visited the McNamaras, a family living in McKennan Park with 12-foot skeletons and a Grim Reaper crowding their lawn, all for the neighborhood to enjoy.
“It gives me joy that everyone in the community loves it,” said Jacque McNamara, the homeowner of the annual display. “It’s a lot of work, but what I get back from it is from the people who appreciate it.”
We invite you to get to know the Kellers and the McNamaras, and to visit their yards in the next week, too … if you dare.
When Keller was 8 years old, her parents took her to the Sioux Falls Jaycees Haunted House (now known as the Jaycee’s Feargrounds). It was there she first saw what could’ve been a tormenting childhood nightmare: A severed head floating in a bathtub full of blood.
“I can still see that image so vividly in my head,” she said. “And it didn’t scare me, I just wanted to know how they did it!”
But it’s no wonder. Her mother, Luella, used to leave rubber snakes in the cupboard and plastic spiders in the cereal. She would wear around a fake bloody finger for anyone with their guard down, and she showed up to Keller’s classroom every Halloween dressed as a witch delivering sugar cookies.
Luella died in 2020, and “Grandma Lu’s Hallow” is a dedication to “the matriarch who taught us all to love Halloween.”
“This has been very therapeutic for me,” says Keller, who has been decorating her yard for eight years now, each year a new theme. This year is haunted dolls. “It’s like a living memorial to my mom, but it’s also out of love for my son. We bond over it and work on this all year together.”
Her son, Lennon, 23 years old and now decorating his own home for Halloween as early as July, remembers all the Halloween costumes his mother made for him growing up – like Robin, Harry Potter, Gilligan, Luke Skywalker and Kermit the Frog. On his 12th birthday, which happens to be in October, he invited over his classmates to carve pumpkins and watch “Night of the Living Dead,” and every fall growing up he would eagerly await when his mother was going to surprise him and have the house decorated for Halloween.
“When I came home from school and saw that all the curtains were down, that’s when I knew everything was up,” Lennon said. “It was just awe-inspiring to walk in the door, to have the entire house transformed into a Halloween exhibit. It was a wonder.”
The two of them start thrifting for props as early as April of every year. When it gets closer to Halloween, family and friends will all pitch in to decorate and then work the nights of the events.
There are a couple “live actors” ready to spook – “if we get a carload of teenagers to who think they’re smarty-pants, then we’re going to let ’em have it” – as well as hosts handing out candy, toy clowns and even free children’s books.
Meanwhile, Jana spends the night greeting guests, just like her mother would do.
“She was very outgoing, very spunky, such a prankster,” Jana says. On the night of her holiday of the year, she shares stories of her mother.
“This is my Christmas,” Jana says. “And we all need that sense of community. Halloween is a night to just welcome the stranger as they are, and if I can make it memorable for someone,
Just like Jana when she was younger, Ronan McNamara is 5 years old and has yet to be spooked.
“When he was two years old, there was this house on 41st Street, between Fourth (Street) and Phillips (Avenue),” says Ronan’s mother, Colleen McNamara. “They would put up scary decorations in their yard for Halloween, and Ronan would want us to drive by every night.
“So I sent them a card and said, ‘My son absolutely loves your house. Thank you for making his day!”
A few nights later, Colleen said when they drove by once again, there was a sign in their yard that read, “Happy Halloween, Ronan!”
“I was in tears,” she said. “It was after that we realized we wanted to do this for him.”
Colleen enlisted the front yard of her parents, Jacque and Mike McNamara, to decorate for Ronan every Halloween.
They live in McKennan Park, the neighborhood that hands out freshly-made cotton candy, freshly-popped popcorn and full-size candy bars on Halloween night and has a live band in someone’s driveway. The neighborhood will see around 2,000 trick-or-treaters within a couple hours, but Jacque says they’ve been welcoming drive-by visitors and passersby all month.
“It’s Halloween here every night,” Jacque says. “Ronan will go outside to give tours and loves talking to everybody.”
Colleen says he watches YouTube videos of the latest Halloween props and is always sneaking outside to rearrange their display or invite over a neighbor walking by. They set out dog treats, too.
“Forty-five, 46, 47, 48 …” Ronan counts the skeletons in his grandma’s yard. “Oh, and that’s Ground Breaker, he’s my favorite.”
He hugs the bones coming out of the grass and then goes on to count 50 more.
