When vehicles pass by Elinor Mason’s house on De la Vina Street in Santa Barbara and passengers yell, “Eww!” out the windows, she takes it as a compliment.
Her home is decorated for Halloween with creepy animatronics of a headless horseman maniacally laughing, a tall vampire-like figure speaking in a deep, growly voice with his mouth and eyes sewn together, and cobwebs and skeletons lining the wooden fence.
Mason said her Victorian-style home looks “haunted anyway,” so she just plays into it for the spooky season.
Besides loving the holiday, she also goes all out for the community spirit during Halloween. She said she enjoys when people have reactions to her decor and bring other people to see it, too.
Her home is just one of many along De la Vina Street that are all decked out for Halloween.
Two of her neighbors, wife and husband duo Kristiana and David Almeida, also go big with the spooky decorations.
Their house sports a 12-foot-tall skeleton named Skelly in their front yard alongside some ghosts, skulls and pumpkins leading up to the front door.
The couple said they decided to go all out with their decor after moving into the neighborhood in 2013 and getting only a handful of trick-or-treaters on their first Halloween night.
However, after elevating the decorations the next year, they said they received more than 100 children knocking on the door of their De la Vina Street home.
“That was really cool, and it’s just a really good community-building opportunity that you don’t really get anymore,” David Almeida said.
He said he and his wife meet so many more people around the Halloween season because people stop and strike up a conversation about their decorations.
The theme of the decor varies slightly each year as they brainstorm ways to use their decor in new ways, but Skelly is a staple.
In addition, the decorating brainstorming process sometimes begins in the summer.
“A neighbor across the street sent a link to the neighborhood in July a couple years ago that the skeleton was back in stock at Home Depot, so we bought the skeletons at the exact same time,” Kristiana Almeida said.
Skelly, along with his eye-popping towering height, comes with an eye-popping $300 price tag. The pair said it’s worth it.
“It’s not just the for-us factor, but it’s watching how many kids get pictures with him every single year,” Kristiana Almeida said.
Giant Skeletons, Pumpkins and No Inflatables
It turns out, Skelly is not the only extremely tall skeleton on the street.
Adjacent neighbors Dean and Katie McKillen have their own 12-foot skeleton friend named André, after French professional wrestler André the Giant.
“I want to make them boyfriend and girlfriend one year,” Katie McKillen joked.
Their house also flaunts a menacing skeleton head guarding their front door, looking out onto the street. Among the big decorations, they have jack-o-lanterns, a projection of dancing skeletons on a window, and skeletons dressed up enjoying a bottle of wine from their family vineyard.
Katie McKillen is more of a Halloween fan and her husband more of a Christmas fan, they said, but together they have gone all out for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas since 2017.
Dean McKillen, who grew up in Ireland, said he had a little bit of culture shock when he moved to Santa Barbara and experienced an American Halloween.
“I just learned a lot. … We can go big. Let’s do a California fun kind of playoff where it is fun, scary and not frightful,” he said.
However, something else sticks out among their decor — teal pumpkins as part of the Teal Pumpkin Project, which highlights houses that have candy alternatives for kids with allergies. The McKillens have small toys ready for those children, as a way to be inclusive.
“Every year we get a couple of families that come by just for that because they know that there’s something that their kid can be included in,” Katie McKillen said.
The pair estimated that it takes them three days to set up all their decor. They usually keep it in their home’s basement, sometimes even storing it at Grassini Family Vineyards, their family winery in Santa Ynez.
“It started out with just lights and a couple spooky little ghosts, and then I think especially during COVID, we went a little crazy,” she said.
They allot themselves $250 a year to add something new, but they said they feel like they have completed their collection. They try to reuse most of what they already have with some pieces spanning back to the 1990s.
Additionally, the De la Vina Street neighbors have a decorating rule: no inflatables.
“Just because you can decorate so easily with them,” Dean McKillen said. “What we all get a kick out of is the work we put into decorations to get it done.”
They also hide a Buzz Lightyear doll somewhere in their decorations, a running joke for the couple after a woman one night gathered at the front of their house and told her friends that Dean McKillen worked for Disney and that’s why the house was decorated so well.
He does not work for Disney.
San Roque Neighborhood
Just a five-minute drive from De la Vina Street is the residential neighborhood San Roque, known for its big displays.
There, Skelly makes another appearance. This time, he appears walking a pet skeleton dog at the Wooten family home on Calle Noguera.
Alongside him stands the 8-foot-tall Tumble the Troll, a tree creepily lit with green lights, a witch and her cauldron, and orange string lights illuminating the house’s front yard. They also have a fog machine that when turned on creates an eerie atmosphere.
Allison Wooten and her husband, Mike, said they do it for their kids — 7-year-old Walker, 6-year-old Lyla, 4-year-old Beau and 1-year-old Cade.
Allison Wooten said she is a bigger Christmas fan, but that one day she walked into Home Depot, saw Skelly and couldn’t resist.
“Then we just started all out because we don’t do anything halfway,” she said.
Their decoration process starts when Home Depot announces its newest animatronic releases for the fall season. However, like many of their neighbors, setup begins in late September. The Wootens estimate it takes them about 10 hours.
“I first do the fence, and then people will start saying, ‘Oh, it’s starting, it’s starting,’” Allison Wooten said.
The couple estimated that they have spent a couple thousand dollars on their Halloween decor.
“I always tell my husband, I don’t care about designer clothes or getting my nails done, but we like to spend money on vacations and decorations,” Allison Wooten said.
The kids also lend a hand in setting up the large animatronics and get excited to show people their creepy friends.
Allison Wooten said her favorite thing is just watching the reactions of Peabody Charter School students on their way to campus.
After Halloween passes, the family is quick to pack up the decorations to prepare for Christmas. Their frightening friends go up into the rafters of the garage as well as in a shed the family had to purchase just to store all of their decor.
A Popular Trick-or-Treat Destination
On the same street, Kayla and Mike Neal’s house also sits close to Peabody Charter School, but that doesn’t stop the pair from creating a scary atmosphere in their front yard and even parts of their garage.
Their front yard welcomes visitors with a wooden sign reading, “Devils Den,” with an arrow pointing into their front yard. Once in the yard, clowns, tombstones, jack-o-lanterns, skeletons, Pennywise the clown and creepy animatronics jump-scare passersby.
“I am not trying to terrify the little kids, but I do kind of like it,” Kayla Neal said.
Some decor is handcrafted by her, such as the jack-o-lantern garland by the front door, which took her months and $1,000 to complete. She said she can switch up for each holiday, making it worth the hassle.
Halloween decorations began popping up at this Calle Noguera home during the last week of September.
Her husband is in charge of the setup, usually taking a day to complete. He said he looks forward to seeing the kids’ reactions to their decor.
In past years, Kayla Neal has recruited her friends’ kids to help them put everything in its rightful place.
“It takes a village to get all of this done,” she said.
The pair estimated that they have poured thousands of dollars into their collection.
She said they never decorated to that extent when their children were small. The duo share six adult children together.
“I don’t really know when it grabbed hold,” she said.
She noted that the neighborhood’s grand history of going all out for the holiday and their house’s proximity to the elementary school contributed to her passion for decorating.
On Halloween night, the front yard comes to life with the movements and sounds of the animatronics getting set off by trick-or-treaters. Halloween afternoon is a special time for Kayla Neal as she prepares to sit out on her front stoop and wait for kids to come by.
“Once 7 o’clock hits, there is a line to get into our house. It just goes down the street,” she said.
Come Nov. 1, however, everything has to go back into its storage place. They store their spooky friends in four different places around their house — from garage to basement.
“I would have a lot more, but there’s nowhere to store anything, so I think we have met our max, but I love it,” she said.
She said that in her dreams, she would have a house with creepy clowns as the main decoration pieces.
Her dream manifests itself at Jenna and Ryan Rogers’ home on Calle Capistrano.
The Creepy Clown House
“Beware of clowns,” the sign on the front gate warns.
Standing out in the front yard are seven clowns waiting to greet guests. Jenna and Ryan Rogers have affectionately named them. Stitches is the tall clown with purple hair, Nozzle is the clown with points as hands, Sweet Tooth is the clown holding an ice cream cone, Edgar, Allan and Poe, named after the writer, are the three clowns balancing on top of each other, and Toothy who hangs by the front door.
The couple started setting up in September, taking them about 15 hours to complete their front yard transformation.
Jenna Rogers said she is so known for her clown theme, and that her mother-in-law gifted her Edgar, Allan and Poe one year for her birthday.
She said she has no clue how she picked the clown theme.
“It was not necessarily planned. We just started with one, and we have had him for quite a while,” she said.
Each year, they add to their clown collection. Jenna Rogers said she feels like she is now committed to the theme despite not being an over-the-top clown enthusiast.
“I would totally change themes, but I have just committed so much to it,” she said.
Her husband said he remembers feeling surprised after finding out that was going to be their Halloween theme.
“It was a little shocking at first,” he said, “especially because we had moved in in September, and three weeks later this guy went up and we were brand new to the neighborhood.”
The Rogers moved into their home three years ago. They say their clown theme raised some eyebrows in the neighborhood, but nonetheless they kept it.
It may have unsettled some of the neighbors, but the clowns are no fright to the couple’s 3-year-old son, Huxley, and 6-month-old son, Hendrix.
But some, the clowns are enough to not even get near the family home, afraid of setting off the sensors and causing the clowns to jump to life. For the most part, however, only the clowns’ lights are kept on. Their movements are saved for Halloween night and special instances when neighbors want to see what they do.
“One of the UPS drivers was like, ‘So, I am not going to be coming in there for the rest of the month,’” she said.
While they don’t mean to scare their delivery drivers, the family’s favorite reactions are from scared trick-or-treaters on Halloween night.
“People would walk up and go, ‘Nope, not this house,’” Ryan Rogers said. “It was pretty interesting how many people were like, no I am not walking out there.”
Jenna Rogers said she thinks she will most likely continue with her clown theme but hopes that in the future she can expand her decor and create a haunted house in her garage and backyard that people can walk through.
Above all, despite being in different parts of the city, all of the neighbors echoed one similar sentiment: They go all out as a way to connect with the community and brighten up people’s days.
These are just some of the wildly decorated homes in Santa Barbara. Do you also like to go over the top with Halloween decor? Share it with us to news@noozhawk.com.
