Driving around Bloomington-Normal this spooky season, it’s hard not to notice highly decorated houses. Some fitted for maximum gore, others playing on the more whimsy October themes.
For those in the area who go all out for Halloween — transforming their yards into unnatural landscapes and making some question “where do they put all that stuff?” — it's an event almost as important as the holiday itself.
Brenda Nichols would know better than most. She’s been decorating her house for decades. The signs in her yard on Carlene Drive in Bloomington, she said, are from the 90s. “We call (that) vintage,” she added. She’s also got a skeletal horse-drawn carriage full of (you probably guessed it…) skeletons. Then, there’s the probably larger than life-size Jack Skellington from Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. He’s nearly as tall as the house.
Nichols keeps her yard kid-friendly and hosts a Halloween party of sorts in her driveway annually. She said the neighborhood is as invested in Nichols’ Halloween landscape as she is.
“If I'm a day late putting it up, they all panic,” she said.
But not all of the décor is store-bought. For example, a cauldron that appears to be bubbling over with green liquid is handmade.
“All you have to do is go on YouTube, Facebook, there’s a lot of DIYs,” she said. "That way, you can find what you want and “you can find it for much less.”
Perhaps that’s why more houses are taking a stab at spooking things up. Nichols said she’s noticed “more and more people are starting to decorate a little bit more and really get into it, almost like Christmas time, because Christmas time in town is huge.” (Another thing Nichols knows firsthand since her husband has even more decorations for Christmas than she has for Halloween.)
Meanwhile on the 1400 block of Grove Street in Bloomington, the Heikens have been doing a Halloween light show for a decade. Lisa Heiken said she’s always been obsessed with the holiday since October is also her birth month. When husband Brad Heiken’s parents moved and left the couple with their Christmas lights and an FM radio transmitter, the duo decided to repurpose them for Halloween.
Now, cars can tune to 88.9 FM and watch the light-up headstones play to a Halloween-themed playlist from 6 to 10 p.m. nightly and until midnight on Halloween.
“Then the lights will turn off for a whole ‘nother year,” Lisa Heiken said.
Brad Heiken said the recent addition of color-changing lights has made the show more memorable and created a “really cool dynamic” for when songs like the Lockjaw's Saga, Monster Mash or the Beetlejuice opening play.
Lisa Heiken said traffic is dependent on road blockages and weather, but overall it’s been a hit.
“We've had some years that we're just totally packed the street is full,” she said.
And Bloomington isn’t hogging all of the fun. Plenty of houses in Normal draw eyes too. On Johnson Drive, the Hoenes family encourages people to actually get out of their vehicles and interact with their set-up. Much of what’s in the lawn is animatronic, so passersby activate blood-curdling noises and the occasional lunging skeleton.
“We started just building upon it, until we got to this point where we have a lot,” said 11-year-old Cannon Hoenes.
His dad Nathan Hoenes continued, “We started off with themes every year, and then it got to the point to where we just ran out of yard space. So now it's all just kind of mish mosh.”
There’s a mix of homemade and store-bought items at the Hoenes. Jennifer Hoenes called her son a “Spirit addict,” referring to the popular chain Halloween store.
“He follows them year-round,” she said. "He sits and he waits for the sneak peeks every year to see what's coming out, and then gives ideas (to his dad, Nathan) of like, ‘What can we do this year?’”
When heading to the house on Halloween itself: beware. Nathan and Cannon designed the young Hoenes a "shocker" costume this year so he can continue his tradition of scaring trick-or-treaters.
