Bel Air resident Andi Lago is under a Halloween curse ? she can?t stop decorating.
Lago said that every year, her Halloween decorations get a little more elaborate.
“It normally takes about four days to get everything up,” she said. “And then I?m just constantly adding.”
Lago?s home is possessed by rubber demons. A tortured skeleton climbs out of his grave, severed heads hang from the rain gutters and evil pumpkins litter the yard, all spotlighted with different colored lights. The decorating first started for the benefit of her own kids, currently ages 15, 8 and 5, Lago said.
“We started out with smiling pumpkins and happy things, but when the older one started getting into the teen years, we added heads with torn off necks,” she laughed. “It?s not as happy as it used to be.”
Today, Lago?s efforts are also for the children in the neighborhood of about 60 homes.
“I know they enjoy it, there are a lot of cars that ride by, and kids that walk by at night. It?s really all in fun,” she said.
Many Maryland residents are decking their homes in evil clowns, fake tombstones and strobe lights in preparation for today. The governor?s mansion is another well-known location for spotting spooky animated figures, colored pumpkin lights and inflatable decorations.
Mike Champion, the marketing manager for Spencer?s Gifts LLC, a national chain, said that the store has been selling Halloween decorations since the end of August.
He said one of the reasons Spencer?s does so well is because it has an in-house team working exclusively on developing authentic-looking props.
“We like our items to have an edge to them or a real feel to them which is better than a plastic tombstone,” Champion said.
He added that two of the best-selling items this year have been the Chest Ripper ($149.99), an animatronic torso that rips open its chest to expose a beating heart, and the Death Crawler ($129.99), a mummy-like torso that moans and moves when someone walks by.
Lago said her most expensive decorations fall in the $75 to $100 range.
“We have some really scary clowns and large figures,” she said. “We try to get decorations that are different and out of the ordinary, and we like the ones that look real, which sounds a little sick but it?s all in fun!”
