By Maggie Downs
Enquirer staff writer
FORT THOMAS - For Bud Stross, it began with a dead man in the yard.
While still in elementary school, Stross dressed a dummy in a flannel shirt and jeans and sat him in a lawn chair in front of his parents' house at 32 Majestic Drive. Since then, creating something special for Halloween has become a year-long obsession for the now 18-year-old.
His elaborate decorations help turn his family's Fort Thomas home into Majestic Nightmare, a spooky extravaganza that is visited by about 750 people each year on a handful of days around Halloween.
Stross is one of hundreds of people around Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky for whom Halloween is more than just a once-a-year celebration. It's a passion that contributes to a billion-dollar industry.
Once reserved for kids and candy, Halloween will scare up record numbers this year as more adults get involved in the festivities.
The National Retail Federation estimates $3.12 billion will be spent on Halloween, up from $2.96 billion a year ago. Halloween is now the second-most-popular holiday for decorating, behind Christmas"Halloween has become the first true people's holiday, and its traditions have spread grass-roots fashion throughout the culture," said Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing, a Pennsylvania research firm and author of Why People Buy Things They Don't Need.
At the Stross household - with dad Chuck, mom Michelle and sons Bud and Justin, 15 - the decorating has gotten so elaborate, it's frightening.
"We're the Grizwolds of Halloween," Bud Stross said in reference to the family in Christmas Vacation.
The holiday has become a year-round endeavor for the Strosses.
"Once we shut down for this Halloween, we start on it again for next year," Stross said.
This year, the display has taken over two neighbors' yards. At their own home, the Strosses erect a faÁade that provides about a dozen additional rooms to create a haunted house.
The theme this year is a ghastly circus - a carn-evil, if you will. It includes gallows in the front yard with someone hanging from it, a cemetery with synchronized halogen lights to provide lightning and a projection theater where a floating head tells jokes.
The haunted house itself includes a laboratory, spider maze, asylum, mummy room, tunnel of darkness and pirate's cove.
It takes several thousand dollars to make this happen.
"I know I could buy my car (a 1989 Oldsmobile Sierra) over several times," said Stross, a freshman at Northern Kentucky University.
The Stross family has plenty of company in this frightening fixation. In Hyde Park, Thomas and April Payne make their own tombstones.
Using plastic foam, paint, stencils and a Dremel, their yard on Burch Avenue features the resting spots of Fester N. Rot, Barry T. Hatchet and Brother Thor "who couldn't take it anymore."
The creepy cemetery is joined by four hangman nooses, an iron-like fence, spider webs, Spanish moss, skeletons and a crank ghost that moves under a black light.
Together, it forms what the couple calls the "House of Payne."
The lavish decorations started as a way to bedeck the yard for a Halloween party five years ago. With the celebration now an annual activity, the couple spends time together year-round at craft stores, figuring out how to make a homemade Iron Maiden.
"My husband gets a little nutty," April Payne, 33, said.
Thomas Payne, 35, estimates that he's spent $300 this year.
"But there have been years we've spent a lot more," he said. "The fog machines and that kind of stuff get expensive."
It takes a lot of time as well. This year, Thomas Payne took a week off work to set up decorations.
"I'll probably spend 50 hours or so putting everything together."
In Batavia, trick-or-treaters to the home of Dave Adams and Mirk Hartman see some familiar faces each Halloween - Freddy Krueger, Dracula, Frankenstein - as well as a yardful of bats, witches, snakes and spiders.
Adams, 48, wouldn't disclose the amount he spends on Halloween.
"We actually have a storage facility that we use to store all our decorations," Adams said.
Decorating the house on Wood Street has been a hobby for the couple for 15 years.
"It's really to celebrate the child in all of us," Adams said.
For the Stross family, the holiday offers the opportunity to be a true prankster.
"People actually come to you to let you scare them,'' Bud Stross said. "And you can see the enjoyment the crowd takes from it."
Plus, it's something the whole family can enjoy - even mom, who watches from afar.
"My mom is pretty understanding as long as we clean up after ourselves," Stross said. "You know, wipe up all the blood and stuff."
Scaring up sales
Americans will spend more than $1.54 billion this year on Halloween decorations, up more than 5 percent from last year's spending, for both indoor and outdoor embellishments.
