Greg Sullivan Herald News Staff Reporter

Saturday

Oct 24, 2020 at 4:59 AM


The motivation is so simple.

“I just want people to come by and have fun,” Susan Barboza said.

Barboza’s home property at 98 Coolidge St. in Swansea undergoes quite the transformation each fall. To say she decorates for Halloween is a massive understatement. The wide front yard is virtually covered in a variety of high-tech, low-tech, medium-tech and no-tech decorations. Spiders and witches. Skeletons and jack-o-lanters. Corpses and ghosts. A disturbing-looking butler. Five projectors. A three-headed dog with a bad attitude. And much more.

It’s noisy. It’s colorful. It’s properly scary. And it’s free. She plans to have her display cranking full power this weekend and next. She even permits people to walk through her display, with distancing required, of course. She said she’ll have hand sanitizer out.

“I love when kids come by and enjoy Halloween,” Barboza said. “We just have a lot of fun with it.”

Barboza caught the Halloween decorating bug from her uncle, who lived in Freetown. She cleverly ended up in possession of a lot of his decorations, and from there she ran with it. She said on the night The Herald News interviewed her that, believe it or not, she has even more stuff in her cellar where a healthy supply of Christmas decorations await their turn.

Like other serious Halloween decorators, Barboza does her shopping immediately after Oct. 31. Spirit is a popular place to shop. She said there are excellent bargains to be found online.

Nicole and Jason Hill, who live at 63 Patton Ave. in Somerset, are also post-Halloween bargain hunters. That has helped them build an impressively ghoulish collection of Halloween decorations for display on their property.

Their display is included on a Channel 12 website of top Halloween-decorated houses in Rhode Island are this neck of Massachusetts. That recognition has caused an upturn in drive-by and walk-by traffic.

Hill said she grew up in an above-average Halloween-decorating atmosphere. Her parents, who live close by, were very much into it. Their daughter has taken things to a new level. Her front yard this year includes a table gathering of a skeleton person, skeleton dog, a scarecrow having the laugh of his life, and a gentleman suffering from extensive facial bleeding.

The boss of the show appears to be well-dressed (by Halloween standards), slightly charming animatronic woman at the front door who might ask you what you’d like carved on your gravestone, or calmly lets a visitor know she or he will never leave.

What’s the inspiration to put in the time and spend the money?

“Just for the fun of it,” Hill said. “This year, everything’s been so up in the air with COVID and we just wanted to have something, where people could just socially distance. They can come by, look at it. Just to get people in the spirit, happy. Just get out of the house.”

Once Halloween passes, Hill said she and her husband will quickly transfer into Christmas decorating mode.

In Fall River, at 1135 Highland Ave. (across from the Adams House), Lou and Tracy Teixeira are attracting visitors not with a mind-boggling variety of decorations – though they have a few – but rather with one that’s next to impossible to miss.

In September, they honored their 19-year-son Tyler’s wish and purchased a giant skeleton. It’s 12 feet tall. It looks more like 20 feet tall standing at the south front of the house, its skull up near the second-floor deck.

They put it up in September, not long after Labor Day, and Bones (their name for the skeleton) has become, perhaps, Fall River’s No. 1 photo-op prop, the Spindle City’s version of the Wall Street Bull.

Some people come to the door to ask permission to take a picture with Bones, whose eyes light up at night. Other people just take the photo. Tracy and Leo Teixeira are fine either way. Leo even brought a hay bale home from his “Leo’s Greenhouse” business in Tiverton and plopped it in front of Bones so people can sit for a photo.

“People every day come by and take a picture with it,” Tracy said.

A friend of Tyler’s told him a giant skeleton would be perfect for him, so Tyler went to dad, who agreed to purchase what was the last giant skeleton in stock at The Home Depot in Somerset. The cost was $300. Tracy said she’s since seen giant skeletons online for $1,200, $1,800, even $3,000.

Bones arrived in 10 to 12 pieces, Tracy said. The Teixeiras put him together and discreetly tied him to a nearby tree and to the ground for support.

This year, the Teixeira’s are in the neighborhood minority. There’s not much Halloween decorating going on in this traditionally very busy trick-or-treating area. It looks like Bones is kind of a one-man Halloween show

“He’s a cool dude,” Leo said. “We’ve got to lift everybody’s spirit a little bit.”

Email Greg Sullivan at gsullivan@heraldnews.com. Follow him @GregSullivanHN.


Insane Halloween home decoration, 98 Coolidge St., Swansea, Mass. PART 1 #halloweenhomedecoration pic.twitter.com/9YuZOAWBDm


— Greg Sullivan (@GregSullivanHN) October 23, 2020//
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