When a Home’s Halloween Decorations Go Too Far

Jennifer Steck

Halloween is the one time of the year when homeowners are allowed—heck, even encouraged—to freak out friends and neighbors with a bountiful display of blood, gore, ghouls, and other scary decorations in their front yard. Yet one display in Katy, TX, may have gone a bit too far. In fact, neighbors are complaining that it crosses the line from frightening to downright offensive.

So what is it? A crib full of blood-spattered zombie babies.

Granted, some neighbors love the display—which includes a zombie mom lovingly looking over her brood, while severed limbs hanging from ropes dangle behind her. But others say that even in this era of “The Walking Dead,” it’s just too much, and should be taken down.

The family behind this spectacle (who remain anonymous) have two kids, aged 10 years and 8 months. The crib in their display is real. The zombie children—dolls dosed with copious amounts of red paint—are not.

“I’m completely fine with it,” one neighbor, Greg Pagans, told the Houston Chronicle. “It’s their yard; they pay their taxes on that yard. It’s hard to keep everybody happy.”

So who’s right? Do homeowners have a right to put up any Halloween decor they want, or is there a point when it becomes so loathsome it should be out of bounds?

“This one crosses the line of decency but is likely allowable,” says Bruce Ailion, an Atlanta-based Realtor® and attorney at RE/MAX Town and Country. But there are limits: “Certainly, something that would constitute hate speech or incite violence would be against the law.”

One horrible example: In 2014, a Fort Campbell, KY, family was forced to take down a display of what appeared to be an African-American family hanging from a tree.

A less inflammatory potential problem would be a gruesome display that totally freaked out a kid.

“Say a neighbor’s child saw the display and was traumatized,” says Ailion. “That neighbor could sue the offending neighbor in civil court for tortious conduct, likely the intentional infliction of emotional distress. It would be up to the neighbor to prove to a jury their child was actually harmed; a strong case would be if that neighbor’s child had been in a bad crash and this brought back bloody images or if a sibling died in that crash.”

And if an overzealous decorator’s home is part of a homeowners association (HOA), the group may also have a say.

“Often private covenants in HOAs regulate what you can and can’t do on your property and go far beyond what the law would regulate,” says Ailion.

But barring the above scenarios, odds are the li’l zombie babies have a right to stay. In fact, in Cabot, AK, a Halloween display of plastic baby dolls cooking in a cauldron erected by Tim Minchue prompted another neighbor to complain to the cops.

While the police did not demand that Minchue take it down, they did notify him that at least one neighbor was ruffled. Minchue dismantled it, but not without taking offense himself.

“It was offensive to me that they would call the police officers over here over something as childish as Halloween decorations,” Minchue told Arkansasmatters.com. “From the time you’re a little kid to a grown-up, everybody enjoys Halloween.”

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