Halloween display too graphic for some


Associated Press

MUSTANG, Okla.

One man lies on his stomach on the driveway. Blood is splattered along the garage door that smashed his head and presumably killed him. Another man lies a few feet away, run over by a truck.

The scene in a middle-class Oklahoma neighborhood made of single-story homes and well-manicured lawns seems out of a horror story because, well, it is. The two accident victims are in fact dummies, created as part of a family’s vivid Halloween display to shock and frighten.

And it certainly has. At least one woman has called 911 to report that a man’s head had been shut into the garage door. Emergency personnel who responded discovered a dummy.

Jennifer Mullins, of Mustang, said she got the idea for the macabre scene from the social-media site Pinterest and showed her husband, Johnnie, who was happy to scare up a display while he was on workers’ compensation and unable to work. Using Johnnie’s work clothes and blankets for stuffing, the couple first placed one life-sized dummy at the garage in early October and the next day, placed one next to the truck. A sign above the dummy in the garage door reads “you’re next.” The front yard is filled with spider webs, skeletons, crosses and RIP signs.

Mullins knew the ghastly display would raise some eyebrows, but she is surprised by just how much attention it’s received, mainly online.

“People think we went too far, and you know, we’re devil worshippers and we must not be Christian folk,” the 32-year-old mother of two girls said. “They’ve said all kinds of stuff. But we’re normal. We love Jesus. We celebrate Halloween.”