The Longs’ lawn attracts kids of all ages to see Halloween decorations
By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Some people decorate for Halloween with cornstalks, pumpkins and hay bales.
Not Bob and Kathy Long of East Mountain Road.
Their front yard is filled with 17 air-inflated Halloween decorations, including a cadaver that periodically lifts the lid to his crypt, orange floating pumpkins and ghosts fluttering in the wind.
Children who dare venture up the front sidewalk to the Longs’ house on Halloween will first pass a robed skeleton holding a chain and lantern. Without warning, it will speak in a deep, ominous voice.
A few feet farther, and the kids’ presence will trigger a deranged man’s head to pop up in a box, again with a warning boom.
A withered old man, with a raven on his shoulder and quoting Edgar Allan Poe, is the next welcomer.
Once, they reach the porch, children’s presence will trigger a witch furiously stirring her cauldron with a high-pitched laugh, of course.
But the reward is great. Rumor has it the Longs are pretty generous with the candy.
The Longs have decorated their lawn for five years now, and the display only grows bigger and more ambitious.
It started with Kathy buying her husband a present for his birthday, which, appropriately, is Mischief Night.
”I never knew what to get him,” she said.
She saw an inflatable carriage and horse and bought it. Every year, they’ve added pieces and the lawn has become a local attraction.
When the inflatables come to life at about 5:30 each evening, commuters slow and gawk. At night, the Longs see flashes of cameras. Sometimes people pull in the driveway, like retired teacher Joan Hanley taking her two grandsons, 12 and 9, to swim practice on Monday.
”Whenever we pass here, it brings a smile to our face,” she told the Longs. “It’s wonderful.”
Ms. Long said she thinks grownups like the display as much as kids.
Ms. Long suspects her husband’s delight with the display goes back to his childhood, when his mother gathered the family in the car to drive around to see lights at Christmas.
”My mother loved it,” said Mr. Long, a truck driver for a quarry firm.
The Longs have baskets of (plastic) body parts hanging off the porch, and Mr. Long had suggested going for more blood and fright. His wife has reined him in, telling him “don’t make it too scary for the little kids.”
He’s disappointed that inflatable dueling banjo skeletons he ordered didn’t make it time for this holiday, but there’s always next year. He said he’s thinking of building a coffin that will appear as if it is coming out of the ground.
”I want the door creaking,” he said.
The Halloween decorations will stay up for a week or two into November. Then the Longs will begin to think about setting up the yard after Thanksgiving.
”Christmas is worse,” said Ms. Long. “It’s twice as many.”

