The Halloween spirit is in full view at Shannon Taylor’s Carmel home. Or is it spirits?
“We started when our son was in kindergarten with one outdoor blow-up, but it’s snowballed from there,” said Taylor, whose son is now in fifth grade. “Last year was our biggest year for decorating. We went a little overboard trying to bring fun to the holiday and neighborhood after a tough year.”
One of the main attractions at their Springmill Crossing home is a creepy doll collection.
“We have 12 plastic doll heads in the tree,” Taylor said. “We have about 10 Victorian porcelain dolls on wooden stakes. We started the doll heads two years ago. It was a spontaneous idea to run to Goodwill to see if we could find them. We hit the jackpot in finding the plastic baby dolls and porcelain dolls. We did buy three dolls from Spirit Halloween. The girl on the swing, the little girl in our window above the door and the zombie baby in the bassinet by our front door. We have a couple of motion-activated animatronics we put out on Halloween night if the weather is nice as well.”
Taylor said the family creates elaborate yard displays at Christmas, too. She said her son, Miller Temple, and husband, Doug Temple, are involved in the effort.
“We decorate for Christmas as much as we do Halloween,” Taylor said. “Our son’s birthday is around Christmas, so he would tell you our favorite holiday is his birthday.”
Taylor said she hopes the trick or treaters enjoy the display.
“We usually have the windows open around this time, and my favorite thing is to hear kids outside talking and pointing at all the different decorations,” Taylor said. “It’s a lot to take in, and you can hear their excitement as they find different things and point them out to each other. We have met a lot of neighbors because of our Halloween decorations, and our house intersects at three different connected neighborhoods, so we always have a lot of people walking by to see what we have done and what’s new and different.”
