It's peak spooky season, and for Bill Killian, that means lots of onlookers looming around their front yard.
“We’ve always been big on Halloween,” Killian said. “We’d decorate inside but we never had anything outside.”
That changed 18 years ago, when his daughter asked if they could build some tombstones and put up a graveyard for Halloween.
“Luckily, that summer we had remodeled the kitchen,” Killian said. “So, we had saved cabinet doors and shelving. We went and cut some tombstones—had old paint in the basement—painted them, got a Sharpie, and looked online to find funny epitaphs to put on them.”
Killian and his wife bought their home at the corner of 1st and Market in Gridley 30 years ago. Killian grew up in Lexington and went to Illinois State for college. He said they chose to settle in Gridley because they loved the house. The graveyard grew year after year; there are now dozens of hand-crafted headstones and a seasonal skeleton scene. This year, they're roasting marshmallows over a fire pit. And Killian added a full-sized Wayne family mausoleum. That's Bruce Wayne—as in Batman. Like everything else, the structure with working doors was crafted from repurposed materials.
“Our little cemetery entrance are curtain rods that were up in the rafters of the garage that we spray painted black,” he said. “We had a trampoline for years and when we took it down, it had the big posts for a net to keep the kids from bouncing out. I turned the posts into a cemetery fence. It’s all recycled, homemade things, apart from the skeletons.”
Two scarecrows on a converted clothesline in the back yard pop their pumpkin heads over the fence. A trio of pumpkins on the porch are carved silhouettes of Simpsons characters. In the side yard, a Steven King-inspired “pet sematary” has head stones for Cujo, Bruce the Bat, Lil’ Sebastian and Antman [the graveyard’s tiniest headstone].
Many references come from pop culture—the Killians are clearly big TV and movie buffs. Some headstones are taken from classic literature or YA favorites. Two years ago, the Barbie movie inspired the yard’s only hot pink headstone. Others are deep cuts or inside jokes. For this year’s display, Killian sourced a TV-10 logo from the 1980s—a nod to his time as a communications major at ISU—and built a television camera out of cardboard, zoomed in on a bony correspondent reporting at a crime scene. A couple years ago, they added a tombstone for Bill himself—the only one he didn’t make.
Putting the display out starts in earnest each August, but really, it’s a year-round, family affair.
“Every year we’re thinking of new references and trying to think of what’s popular,” Killian said. “But I guarantee no one comes out and knows all the references.”
The “kids” are now pushing 30, but the whole family is behind keeping the graveyard going. The tally is about 110 tombstones. Some have been retired, given to neighbors now fashioning their own front yard displays. When he meets new people around Gridley and tells them where he lives—they know it’s that one Halloween house with the graveyard. He loves seeing people come by and admire it, too.
“Is this just weird now?” he said. “I have no children at home and I’m still putting up the graveyard. But they love to come see it and they’re always encouraging me and giving me ideas for it.”
