Getting the Creeps in Skokie: Front yards to put you in the Halloween spirit

Halloween is fast approaching, which means not only are the temperatures and leaves changing, but so too are front yards and facades all across Skokie. 

A drive through the village reveals a healthy display of local businesses, apartment buildings and homes getting in the seasonal spirit with spooky decorations. Skeletons are hovering in terraces, scary-faced pumpkins are falling over staircases and enormous inflatable spiders are clambering across rooftops.

“I always loved Halloween,” said Jeannette Camacho, a Skokie resident whose front lawn is crowded with skeletons and scarecrows in various menacing poses.

Make sure to read our other Getting the Creeps pieces — Wilmette | Highland Park | Glencoe | Northfield — all publishing before Halloween night.

In one corner, two plastic skeletons crawl on hands and knees to draw another wearing a top hat in a carriage.

Elsewhere, another sits on a bench made of bones.

In front of other nearby homes, ghouls walk inflatable black cats and tattered ghosts hang from tree branches. 

Camacho said she likes to start putting up her Halloween decorations in September every year; though each season she changes it up a bit. Last year, she had her skeletons walking a dog that was chasing a mailman up a tree. 

Her property is also highlighted on FrightMaps, which records where homes go all out with Halloween decorations.

“We always added in a few things here and there, but it’s always something that just excites me, and seeing everyone’s decorations made me want to pull the plug and get a little more serious about it,” Camacho said. “It’s just for fun and I love it. I love other people’s reactions to it as well.”

Sara Sayze, another Skokie resident, was filling her front yard with spiders, witches and strings of skulls one October afternoon. They’re decorations, some vintage, that she’s accumulated over the years and continues to put up even though her kids no longer trick or treat.

“They loved it but they’re adults now,” said Sayze, a pair of gardening gloves on her hand to help stake some of the displays into the ground. “The old people tend to like it, the kids, they love it, so I still do it.”

Patricia Butler and her husband, Ron Kirschner, put up the same decorations every Halloween: a simple but captivating pair of eyes over curved windows that peek out of their slanted roof, giving their unique-shaped home a face.

A pumpkin hangs over their door. 

“The eyes are what we do every year and the pumpkin is what we do every year,” Butler said. “People seem to like it and think it’s creepy, and that makes me happy.”

The Record is a nonprofit, nonpartisan community newsroom that relies on reader support to fuel its independent local journalism.

Become a member of The Record to fund responsible news coverage for your community.

Already a member? You can make a tax-deductible donation at any time.