Halloween Home Haunts: Your Neighbor Built a Nightmare | Thursday Thrills

0:01 Put yourself on a neighborhood sidewalk on an October night. The house ahead has gone completely overboard. A skeleton looks down from somewhere near the gutters. There's a graveyard where the lawn used to be, and a figure sitting beside the front steps with its hands folded in its lap. You've spotted the trick. That one is a person. You give it plenty of room. It doesn't move. You pass the fake tombstones, watching those folded hands. Still nothing. Maybe you were wrong. Maybe the whole thing is just a very good display. Then, the enormous skeleton turns its head. Now, you're watching both of them. And the candy bowl is right in between them. Because... Why wouldn't it be? This is Thursday Thrills. A quick weekly ride into the creepy stories,

1:20 haunted places, weird obsessions, and eerie little corners of the world worth talking about. I'm Enrique Couto, and tonight we're celebrating Halloween home haunts, the people who turn an ordinary house into the spooky house on the block. So what makes a neighbor's front yard feel like Halloween has finally arrived?

1:47 I have some thoughts. A surprising number involve candy, and one involves a gentleman who can't stop throwing up. When I find a house that's gone completely overboard for Halloween, I stop and take it in. I'm in awe of the creativity. Somebody looked at that patch of grass and saw room for something wonderfully unreasonable. Which means somewhere behind those decorations is a kindred spirit. Pardon the pun. Actually, don't.

2:27 We're owning it. I get that same little rush as smelling the first cup of hot cider when the air starts getting cooler. Fall is here. Halloween is here. Somebody nearby is excited enough to announce it with a skeleton visible from the next intersection. A home haunt might be a display you enjoy from the sidewalk or a walkthrough the owners invite you into. Either way, The ordinary house is part of the pleasure. There could be a basketball hoop above the graveyard. The monster might be standing beside a garden hose. I love a big commercial haunted attraction.

3:12 I go ready to be scared, ready to indulge. But when the neighborhoods around me turn spooky, it takes me back to being a kid out trick-or-treating. The other little monsters were a part of it too. All of us running around, helping the street feel different for one night. You were wearing a costume. They were wearing costumes. And the house ahead had apparently been taken over by somebody with much better access to electricity. Here in the Dayton, Ohio area... The West Carrollton Stranger Things house did that for me in a big way. I went back year after year to see it. Painted characters, sculpted pieces, scenes from the show spread across somebody's home. It was grotesque and beautiful and macabre and full of that 80s nostalgia.

4:14 I could stand there and just look. The artist behind it was Amber Windle. Think about the work that went into turning a love of that show into something people could walk past and enjoy. The attention to detail knocked me on my butt. I remember Eddie Munson playing guitar up on their roof with bats all around him. Your eyes could travel from one piece to another and keep finding something worth stopping for. a television world had spilled out into an unassuming Ohio neighborhood. Every visit gave me a new detail to find. You start following somebody's imagination, wondering what they'll come up with next. I love that Halloween gives people permission to put their strange little obsessions where the rest of us can find them. It's why

5:19 I do this show to help have an outlet all year long for that Halloween feeling. You might never learn this about somebody from a polite wave across the street, but then October arrives and there's their imagination, towering over the hedge. Back on our imaginary path, you lean toward a tombstone to admire the painted cracks. When you straighten up, the giant skeleton is directly overhead. You hadn't meant to get this close. A good decoration, it can hold you there, and some of the best are, in my opinion, profoundly disgusting.

6:13 As a kid, I loved those standing figures that... continually threw up green water, or at least I hope it was, into a tank. A pump kept the whole awful production going. At least, that was my understanding of the plumbing. I was probably nine years old, and I was primarily there to appreciate the performance and score some candy. I would just stare. There was something magnificent about how unnecessary it was.

6:47 Somebody had gone to the trouble of providing their neighborhood with a person who could vomit indefinitely. The candy, it could wait. I had found the evening's entertainment just for me. My mother would eventually try to move me along. She found it disgusting, which was a fair assessment and also the principal attraction. That was the sort of house I loved.

7:20 Something gaudy, bright, or unusual enough to make me stop, dead in my tracks on the sidewalk. I immediately felt optimistic about the candy situation, too. I had no evidence. I simply trusted the judgment of whoever had installed the zombie vomit fountain. Those memories sit in my head alongside Goosebumps, The Monster Squad, and The Addams Family. All those things helped build the feeling I still go looking for when October comes back around. That feeling is exactly why I created Weekly Spooky. I wanted to keep chasing the excitement, the weirdness, the pleasure of being a little scared and having an awesome time. So if you've ever wondered how we got here, somewhere in the explanation is a small

8:22 boy refusing to leave a vomiting, perpetually vomiting decoration. I guess you could say he was doing research. Yeah, we'll go with research. Very important research. not only about vomiting statues, but also about the best of the best when it comes to fun-size candy. But that's a story for another time.

8:58 If you're enjoying this trick through our spooky neighborhood, follow or subscribe to Weekly Spooky for Thursday thrills every week and something scary right here on the feed. At least once a day, if not sometimes twice, like the scary story that'll be right here at 2 p.m. Eastern. Don't miss it. And hey, send this to a friend whose Halloween decorations make you stop on the sidewalk and let them know their work is appreciated. All right, you're past the last tombstone now. The porch light catches a loose thread on the seated figure's sleeves. Up close, you can see the work that went into it. You cannot see, though, whether anyone is breathing. Somebody dressed that figure, bent the arms, chose where to put the chair. and those little decisions

10:02 can turn into a very large hobby. At Haunt 31 in Lake Hills, Illinois, the creator's own history describes the first Halloween at the new home in 1999. painted plywood tombstones, a motionless zombie, and about 15 trick-or-treaters. The next year, the display tied in a local scariest house contest. More improvements followed. According to the maker, most props are built by the creator, family, and friends, with skills learned along the way, including welding and theatrical lighting. I've always enjoyed a hobby where the next reasonable step is learning to weld.

10:55 That zombie has clearly become a responsibility, but it doesn't have to become an obligation. You can love Halloween enormously without promising to build a bigger underworld every September. One ghost in a window still makes you the spooky house. The person putting it on should get to enjoy October too, after all. If the setup has stopped being fun, there's nothing wrong with giving a few monsters the year off.

11:31 They're already dead. They can wait. You take another step. The candy bowl is close enough to see what's in it. For the record, this is absolutely not why you're moving closer. From above, the giant says, Go on. You look up. Of course you do. Home Depot's new app-controlled 12-foot skelly has a particularly fun advertised feature for 2026. Owners can speak through it live and can control its head and mouth movements. That's the separate animated model. The older skeleton outside your kitchen window hasn't secretly learned to hold a conversation.

12:24 On our imaginary porch, somebody chose exactly when that skull should break its vow of silence. You find yourself saying, Thank you, to a head bigger than your laundry basket at home. Then, you remember the chair. When you look down, the hands are still folded. Nothing has changed that you can prove. You're close enough now to reach the bowl.

12:59 You stretch out one hand and keep your eyes on the other two. This is where I would hold the shot. Your hand hovering over the candy. Those hands resting in its lap. Then, one finger lifts. You make a noise you would prefer your friends not to discuss. Then, you laugh and take your candy. Somebody arranged that moment, waited for you, and gave you a story to take home along with the fun-sized Reese's. These days, my favorite part...

13:47 is handing out the candy. I get plenty and I give it out in big fat handfuls. There's a little performance when I open the door too. I like to suddenly put a lot of emphasis into the first word of who's at my door. That who does a surprising amount of heavy lifting. I try to judge the group before they get to me. Older kids who seem like they can take it Get the bigger version. Little ones get a gentler greeting. Then comes a giant treat for their trick. The parents waving and thanking me. The kids laughing.

14:30 The candy going into their pails or sacks. That is the ultimate for me. I get to be on this side of the door now. And it's just as sweet as the other. I don't always get the scare right, though. I've had kids refuse to come closer or run away or drop to their butts and cry. Sometimes a little one is hidden behind the taller kids before I can see them. That's a reason to dial it back. I mean, I want them to leave happy. They should get their candy without having to prove their brave enough to approach a bizarre stranger. A neighborhood gives you all sorts of visitors.

15:22 Somebody wants the full monster voice, but then somebody else wants to look from beside their parent's leg. There's room for both, and the person at the door gets to try and make the right call. I often think about how much those houses meant to me when I was a kid. The people putting them together couldn't have known I'd still be talking about their decorations years later. They were just making an evening fun, and I was one of the little monsters just passing through. Now I'm holding the candy bowl. I'd like to give somebody a memory that makes them smile the way those memories still make me smile to this day. So this October, take the little detour, stop and admire the house that went overboard,

16:21 keep to the paths, follow any visiting hours, and leave the props for everyone to enjoy. If the maker is outside, tell them which detail caught you. The painted face, the creature on the roof, the completely unreasonable amount of green water vomit. Let them know there's another kindred spirit on the sidewalk, and if you are handing out candy, I hope you get a moment to enjoy the little monsters coming toward your door. For one evening, the neighborhood has dressed for the occasion, and you get to help make it feel like Halloween. I'm Enrique Couto, and this has been Thursday Thrills. Be generous with the candy. Be kind to the monsters. And before we leave our imaginary porch, have one more look at the chair beside the steps.

17:30 It's empty now. You may want to check behind you. Come back tomorrow for more fear. Until then, lock your doors as if that will help.