Halloween Shed

My neighbor just purchased a Halloween shed. It’s not anything special, simply one of those prefabricated kits which can be purchased at the local home improvement mega-store, the kind that can be assembled in an hour by those with a carpentry aptitude, or half-completed and abandoned in three days by people like me.

If you are not familiar with the Halloween shed concept, it is a regular shed, except its sole purpose is to store all the decorative Halloween crap that people like my neighbor purchase to litter their yard with witches, skeletons, zombies, and that giant inflatable pumpkin with the creepy face, the one that keeps me awake at nights from the constant rumbling of the fan keeping it inflated. I know the man’s decorations are going for scare factor, but the pumpkin ruins the entire display. “Scary” and “inflatable” are mutually exclusive.

The amount of Halloween junk the guy has exceeds any level of moderate expectation, even his own level of decoration for Christmas. Of course he has all the inflatable Christmas crap: Santa, a snowman, reindeer, packages, and a second Santa in a Menards racing car. These are placed in a central location in his front yard. The Halloween junk takes up that space and more, spilling out into side yards, hanging on tree limbs over the street, and crawling up ths sides of his house. Most of it cannot be easily broken down like his inflatable toys. Hence, the need for the Hallloween shed.

I remember when I was a child, my parents would decorate for Halloween. They’d paste up thin cardboard cutouts of a witch’s head, a movable skeleton, and a black cat, all taped to the inside of the house’s picture window. We’d replace the white lightbulb in the post at the end of the driveway with an orange one. Total decoration time: ten minutes. Once Halloween was over, the take down time was half that, and the decorations were easily stored under the stairs, next to the Christmas tree, the box of ornaments, and the outside lights. If it was a seasonal decoration it was stored under the stairs. If it didn’t fit under the stairs, we didn’t own it.

These days people apparently feel the need to augment simple decorations with more complicated ones, at least those which are complicated to setup, power, and store. They buy wire, illuminated Christmas reindeer for their yards. And big plastic Santas and snowmen. And all that inflatable Christmas junk. Perhaps they have a big enough space under their stairs to stow it.

But then comes the Halloween crap. The crap that cannot be easily stored, like the mechanical werewolf that turns its head and bays. And the talking witch that greets trick or treaters with a scary pleasantry as they approach the front door. Or the seven foot tall creepy clown zombie marionette that my neighbor won in a raffle from the temporary Halloween store that is two doors down from the other temporary Halloween store. It is obvious the space under his stairs is not large enough to store this crap, unless half of his house is under the stairs. Which it most certainly isn’t given that he just purchased a Halloween shed.

I noticed this past year he started decorating his yard for St.Patrick’s day. I’m looking at his shed, and I’m wondering if it is big enough.