Mr. Halloween.
What else what you call someone who spent a week carving 32 pumpkins and decorating the yard of his home all for a few hours of fun?
His real name is Tony Webb, a 1990 SHHS graduate and a milkman for Curley’s Dairy in Salem but on Halloween, he let’s his ghoulish side out.
“We’ve been decorating our yard on Halloween for about four years,” Webb said, a pile of pumpkins stacked outside the family home’s front door. “This year we had 32 pumpkins. I buy the stencils and it took about a week each night after work.”
Webb turns to Ray and Virginia Ewing for his pumpkins “because they’ve always treated me good.”
He searches for all sizes of pumpkins to fit a variety of stencil patterns.
His decorating habit came from his grandmother, who loved holidays.
“It’s fun. Every year I see the same people come back. It’s really neat,” Webb said.
In addition to the grim reaper (Webb’s favorite) there are cut outs of black cats, devils and goblins of all kinds.
The Webb family includes his wife, Shelbye and children Noah, Sammy and Justin. Although the kids are still too little to help, Webb said they love the tradition and he plans to involve them when they’re old enough.
Webb estimates a total cost of about $50 in pumpkins and other yard decorations. He gets quite creative, using an old door as material for fake headstones with sayings such as “Rick R Mortiss”, “Frank N Stein” and “R U Dead.”
“It’s just fun…it’s all about kids having fun,” Webb said.
The pumpkins don’t go to waste, Webb says. He gives them to a friend who feeds them to his pigs.