I had a next-door neighbor for a few years. He was a nice enough, although rough-around-the-edges, person. He managed to sell his house while the housing market was still on the upward spiral. The purchaser of this house is a Vietnamese man whom I met once or twice when he and his associates were preparing the house for rental. Currently, the owner of this house is on his third family. The second family was odd.

When they moved in, there were 7 baby strollers, 2 bicycles, and a sofa in the front lawn at the end of the move-in day. About two days later the sofa disappeared, and a recliner appeared in its place. 4 of the strollers were replaced by 2 vacuum cleaners and the bicycles had been replaced with a birdbath. Several weeks, appliances, and large pieces of furniture later, the front yard was fairly uncluttered. Usually there would just be a lamp or nightstand or scooter in the lawn from that time on. Until September.

 

Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer. People like to have cookouts, drink beer, and sometimes decorate for Halloween. These people spent the 3-day weekend decking their front yard out in Halloween decorations. There were ghosts, zombies crawling out of graves, Dr. Frankenstein's cavalcade of monsters, headless horsemen (the horse was also headless... total chaos [joke courtesy of M. Hedberg]), jack-o-lanterns, skeletons, bales of hay, corpses, headstones, and a witch. And there was straw covering up all the grass to give a realistic "straw-covered lawn" effect to the display. At night I realized that it also had strobe lights and sound effects. Luckily, it was only 60 days until Halloween.

 

So, Halloween came and went, but the decorations did not. Finally it was Thanksgiving weekend, and the neighbors put up their Santa Claus and reindeer display, their snowman, and the nativity scene. It was a much smaller and less flamboyant holiday display than the Halloween display. The problem was it was really hard to notice the Christmas items amongst all the Halloween items. It looked like Santa Claus was navigating his sleigh through Hell. "On Dasher, On Dancer, don't hit the zombie!" The nativity scene showed the baby Jesus surrounded by Mary and Joseph, a vampire, three wise men, two donkeys, a zombie, a camel, and the angel Gabriel announcing the birth of Jesus while suspended from a noose.

 

A few weeks later Halloween began to subside. By New Years Eve it was just Santa urging his team of reindeer across the straw toward the ghost, and a much smaller Nativity group (one of the Wise Men disappeared with the Halloween stuff. I think he was killed).

 

A few weeks after that police showed up at my house. The detective asked if the whereabouts of the neighbor (the man that lived there) were known, and offered his card when they weren't. I walked over later that night and noticed all the furniture and curtains that could previously seen through the windows were gone. They scrammed before the police caught on to whatever they did. All that was left was a bale of hay, 4 reindeer, a ghost, and a zombie's arm. Those things disappeared after another 3 weeks. Except for the hay. That is still in the front yard to this very day.