Holiday decorating has always been big in Gladstone Park, dominated by Christmas. Halloween gradually began coming into its own in the community when people began supplementing the pumpkins and scarecrows on their porches with strings of hanging ghosts, animated witches, and flying bats. Then the possibilities escalated. To see what Gladstone Parkers displayed in their yards for Halloween, 2024, scroll down to 69 representative photos taken on 25 different streets.

How did All Hallow’s Eve become so spectacular locally? It was when the COVID Pandemic shut down trick-or-treating in 2020 that Halloween displays in Gladstone Park became a major event. Socially-isolated homeowners bursting with energy and inspired by the towering 12-foot skeletons Home Depot had begun selling, created more and more magnificent displays. Carved jack-o’-lanterns became cornucopias of hay bale harvests. All manner of ghouls from witches to zombies to ghosts to mummies—some lifesize—loomed over passersby. Tombstones, skulls, fuzzy rats, Frankensteins, flying bats, bubbling cauldrons, black coffins, spiders in giant webs, and grim reapers all made their appearances. Inflatables grew exponentially, ranging from 4-foot black cats to 8-foot Draculas to 15-foot pumpkinhead monsters. As the fun grew, the parameters of what you’d expect to see expanded to include dragons, octopi, unicorns, werewolves, gargoyles, clowns, farmers, aliens, gorillas, and famous characters such as Scooby-Doo, Bullwinkle, and Mickey Mouse. Some were animated. Twinkling orange and purple lights graced trees more used to holding red and green Christmas strands.

The community no longer needed the Halloween Decorating Contest that had risen out of the Pandemic to amp them into action. Instead, at least one block created a “Skeletons in a Tree” tradition of its own in 2024 in a mashup of Elf on the Shelf and A Christmas Carol. As legend goes, the Ghost-of-Halloween-Past brings 2- to 3-foot skeletons to the lawns and porches where children live and surreptitiously moves them around at night so that the little ones have to hunt them down the next day. Will it catch on? Who knows?

The photos below are a sample of Halloween, 2024 decorations Gladstone Parkers had on display in their yards by October 20. If you want a real treat, take a Decorating Tour through the community in person to see these “Fright Night” sights in order heading east to west starting at N. Central. You’ll experience everything from the gauche to the spooky to the tasteful to the absurd, made even spookier at night when everything’s cackling, growling, groaning and glowing.

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