NYC’s most frightening and fabulous Halloween houses — from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side
Looking for some thrills and chills this spooky season? Take a walk! These residences boast some of NYC’s most imaginative and frightening Halloween decor, from atrocious animatronic displays to kitschy light-up flying saucers. Have a look — if you dare.
Terror in motion
43 St. James, Clinton Hill
The Spruills can’t remember when they began tricking out their brownstone for Halloween. Wednesday — a 58-year-old retired English teacher who now runs an after-school program — thinks it was around the COVID pandemic. Her husband, Mike, 54, insists it was before that.
But they do agree on the item that started it all: a talking tombstone from Target.
“I came home and said, ‘You gotta put this up!’” Wednesday told The Post.
Mike, a music teacher, was skeptical. But he humored his wife.
“I started adding stuff … this zombie guy, and then eventually some spiders, a couple rats,” he said. “And then I started losing my mind.”
Their decorations now include an animatronic ghoul that lunges at innocent passersby, a shaking demon with long hair and no eyes, a glow-in-the-dark tarantula with the body of a pumpkin, neon signs, and an assortment of painted skulls and skeletons — some holding flowers between their teeth.
“We have a big basement,” said Mike of storing it all.
He spends anywhere between a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars a year on their display, and he starts hunting for new additions as early as February.
This year alone, he’s added three new features: a 10-foot-tall grim reaper, an equally enormous talking witch aboard a broomstick, and a creepy singing marionette on a swing.
“He’s my new boyfriend,” Wednesday joked of the latter. “Bobby Strings!”
Alien invasion
106 Gates Ave., Clinton Hill
Linda Grafakos may not have the most extravagant Halloween display in the city, but she definitely has the most imaginative.
“The theme is E.T. is having a party and Men in Black are security,” the 67-year-old retiree told The Post. “I like ‘E.T.’, I like ‘Men in Black,’ so I meshed the two together.”
On her stoop, five figures don E.T. masks, two aliens and an astronaut sit among an autumnal arrangement of pumpkins, cornstalks and foliage. Up top, two life-size dummies wearing oversized suits and sunglasses survey the scene.
Grafakos has spent the past 10 years dreaming up quirky Halloween tableaux for her home inspired by movies such as “Jurassic Park,” “Black Panther” and “The Pirates of the Caribbean.” She builds most of her displays herself and has a strict budget: about $100.
“My family thinks I’m crazy,” she said, except for her “gorgeous grandson” who sits with her as she makes her crafts. “He’s not scared of them at all.”
Childhood dreams — and nightmares
158 Marlborough Rd., Prospect Park South
As a kid, Donna DiDonato wished her parents would put up more Halloween decorations. Now, she’s an adult, with a house of her own in Prospect Park South. It has a large porch, and she can put up as many decorations as she wants.
“I’m counting roughly 30,” she said. “And I add more every year.”
DiDonato — who works in sales and marketing and is in her 50s — started her collection of ghostly ghouls and skeletons about 10 years ago, when she found a haunted Victorian lady in a diaphanous dress and glowing red eyes.
“I felt like women were underrepresented in Halloween decor,” she said. So she “searched high and low” for others and eventually found a quartet of fiery-eyed Miss Havishams to hang from her porch. She also has an assortment of grim reapers, ghosts, skeleton dogs, a tree monster and a 10-foot talking cadaver.
“I added a two-headed dog this year that barks, and unfortunately scares the dogs when they’re walking by,” she said. The decorations extend to the inside of her house, which she fills with trick mirrors from eBay and fake crows.
“I love aesthetics, I love interior design,” she said. “But the underlying thing is community. I talk to people that I would not ordinarily talk to. They stop in front of your house. You smile, you engage in conversation. It’s just unique.”
Out of this world
123 East 61st St., Upper East Side
Amid the tasteful autumnal decor on the Upper East Side, one 61st Street townhouse has a purple inflatable flying saucer, spacesuit-clad skeletons, and a light-up display worthy of Dyker Heights during Christmastime.
“I wanted to do something different,” said Michael, an investor who preferred not to give his last name. “We have 200 to 300 people stopping to take pictures outside our house a day,” he added.
Michael began shopping for different space props online in mid-September and spent more than $1,000 on the decorations.
He, his wife, his 7-year-old son and the staff in their house put the whole thing up in just a “couple hours” while listening to the “Ghostbusters” theme.
“New York City is such a fast-paced city,” he said. “It’s nice to give people a reason to stop and smile.”
Creepy Stalk-ers
161 East 82nd St.
“Upper East Died” reads a sign in front of 161 East 82nd Street: one of the scariest and most magical houses in the neighborhood during Halloween.
For the past eight years its residents — a couple in their 50s who wished to remain anonymous — have trussed up their stoop with a cornucopia of corn stalks, pumpkins, gourds, gravestones, severed hands, skulls and cobwebs. Hooded grim reapers dangle from the windows, and spirits loaded with chains adorn the gate in front of the property.
This year, they’ve added a new figure: a seven-foot-tall pumpkin man with a demonic jack-o-lantern head purchased at Costco. “It moves too, but the sensor is too far away,” the husband told The Post. “But maybe on Halloween we’ll move it down here [so it will work].”
All Dolled Up
353 President St., Carroll Gardens
Lucas Santiago doesn’t normally play with dolls. But the 22-year-old PA for ABC News has a collection of Barbies, old-fashioned baby dolls and Victorian-style figurines that he arranges outside his family’s Carroll Gardens house every Halloween.
“We have about 20 dolls,” Santiago said. “We’ve found most of them online, but walking around Brooklyn, people always leave things they don’t want out to give away, so I’ve gotten some of the baby dolls that way.”
Santiago dresses the dolls in “creepy” white dresses, which he buys from Amazon, and arranges them in a vertical line, as if they were parading out of the house. This year, they’re carrying a figure wrapped up in a black body bag.
“Everyone is scared of dolls,” the surprisingly jovial Santiago said. “And having them in a line like that makes them more terrifying.”
