During the last big storm, pieces of Felicia Koch’s 12-foot skeleton went flying every which way down East Avenue in Lewiston. The head went one way, an arm went the other and the whole family had to scramble to retrieve all the pieces of their bony friend. 

More recently, on Robert Avenue a short distance away, Kelly Silvia had to enlist a group of friends to help her attach the head of the 12-foot scarecrow that now stares menacingly from her front lawn.  

Aaron Jellison on Sabattus Street has about $100,000 worth of Halloween decorations to put up and very little time to do it. The man is working 84 hours a week at his regular job and he’s still got plenty left to do if he wants to maintain his reign as the king of Halloween decorations around here. 

Robert Cote, meanwhile, on Jefferson Street, has taken to Scotchgarding his enormous clowns and spiders. As expensive as they are, those things just don’t last as long as one would like. 

I think the lesson is clear: With big Halloween ambitions come big responsibilities.  

Not to mention big money — those 12-foot skeletons you see here and there around the area are currently selling for right around $400. A few people who have them paid even more than that because competition for them is so fierce. The stores — Lowe’s and Home Depot, mainly — sell out as fast as you can hit your browser refresh button. 

When I went prowling around for big Halloween decorations on a sunny day that hit 80 degrees last week I didn’t have high hopes that I’d find many. It was only mid-September, after all, and with Halloween still six weeks away, who’s going to have their yards adorned already? 

Shows what I know. The people who love the holiday enough to expend all the money and labor on the REALLY BIG STUFF tend to start early. Some keep their giant ghouls up all year. Others are more restrained, opting to wait until mid-Augusta before dragging those massive boxes out of the garage and setting it all up. 

I found so many people who go big for Halloween right here in Lewiston alone, that I don’t have enough time or space to tell you about all of them. But this ghoulish labor of love is so popular these days that I have plenty to examine with you here.  

Some of them you’ll recognize because they’re located on busy stretches — if you haven’t seen the Jellison family’s setup on Sabattus Street, for instance, you must be housebound — while others are tucked away in quiet little neighborhoods. Some of them you’ll see on your way to the bank or grocery store, others you’ll have to search for. 

And every single one is worth the search.  

Let’s get started. 

Kelly Silvia, Robert Avenue, Lewiston

When I first got to Silvia’s place, in a sedate neighborhood off Central Avenue in Lewiston, I was so excited, I almost forgot to put the kickstand down on my motorcycle. 

Standing tall in the front yard, scythe gripped in his straw hands, was the biggest scarecrow I’ve ever seen. He stood higher than the eaves of the roof behind him and his baleful gaze seemed to fall on me directly. 

Standing next to the scarecrow was an inflatable grim reaper of similar stature. Lower on the terrain around them were a variety of other Halloween characters who stood like frightful foothills beneath a ghoulish mountain. 

Me, I couldn’t take my eyes of the 12-foot scarecrow into whose shadow I had walked. I’d seen one in Lowe’s, selling for $399, a few days earlier, yet that one didn’t appear nearly as imposing as the one that glared down on me in Silvia’s yard. 

I was smitten. 

Silvia, on the other hand, admits that the scarecrow was her second choice. 

“I wanted the big skeleton,” she says. “I couldn’t get one because they were all sold out. But I had to have something big to go in the front yard, so I got him.” 

Him being the giant scarecrow and his bag of tricks. 

“His eyes glow, his chest glows and he talks,” Silvia tells me. “Everybody who comes by is absolutely obsessed with it, especially the kids. They’ll come up and touch him or walk in front of his sensors.” 

Activate the sensors and the grim-faced scarecrow will tell you stories in a voice that sounds like it just crawled out of a grave. His eyes glow bright red. His rib cage flickers with an angry yellow light as if his very innards are ablaze. 

Silvia talks about the scarecrow with great affection. She paid more than $400 for the creature and has evidently come to love him. To set him up, she climbs a 12-foot ladder and enlists the aid of whomever is around at the time to help her to attach the head. 

This is a woman who loves Halloween, and she has a full sleeve of tattoos to prove it. We’re talking an entire arm adorned with bats, a haunted (I assume) tower, a leering Jack-o’-lantern face and a cemetery that sprawls up to her elbow. 

Silvia officially starts decorating for the big holiday on her birthday in mid-August. Like every single person I talked to about big Halloween decorations, she lets me know, emphatically, that she is not done setting up. Even though her yard seems jam packed, Kelly Silvia’s work continues. 

“I’m excited to get the rest out,” she says. “I’ve got another scarecrow who holds a chainsaw, so when the kids reach into a bucket, it snaps up.” 

She says this with clear delight. 

Also like most other Halloween decorators I’ve talked to, Silvia makes reference to a certain person on Sabattus Street who goes REALLY BIG for the holiday. This fellow — nobody seems to know his name — is someone I’ll have to catch up with, and soon. 

But first, a ride downtown, to Jefferson Street. 

Robert Cote, near the corner of Pine and Jefferson streets, Lewiston 

It required a real act of courage for me to climb the steps and ring Mr. Cote’s doorbell. 

To get to that door, I had to walk between a truly terrifying puppet named Bobby Strings, a giant, red-eyed spider, and a towering bone collector with black eyes staring out of a mummified face. 

The 12-foot bone collector already had one skeleton clutched in a hand, so apparently he was fond of skinny guys. 

To my good fortune, Cote answered the door before the ghouls could get me. 

Cote has been going big for Halloween for the past four years. He decorates the outside, his wife handles the decor inside. 

“My wife likes Christmas,” Cote tells me, “but I prefer Halloween.” 

I never would have guessed . . .

Cote’s front yard is already crowded with frights. In addition to the bone collector, the giant spider and that sincerely disturbing puppet, there is a full ghoul band consisting of skeletal guitarist, singer and drummer. There is a graveyard plot with graves that appear to be freshly dug — hands reach from some of them. 

There is an old-style wishing well with God knows what inside its dark depths. There are massive webs with more of those &^!#@ giant spiders crawling along it. There is all this and more, and just about every piece is interactive in some way. 

The very front of Cote’s yard is surrounded by a low, wrought iron fence — the kind of fence one associates with ancient, overgrown cemeteries found in the woods. In front of that fence is a row of pedals that any passerby can step on to activate the monstrosities in Cote’s yard. 

The kids really like the interactive component, but they’re not the only ones. 

Not long ago, a woman approached Cote’s yard and began stepping on those pedals, trying to figure out how to work them. She did so, Cote says, with a sense of real joy as the animated creatures started to move about.

“She was an older lady,” he says. “Must have been around 80.” 

That’s what it’s all about, Cote tells me. He spends hundreds of dollars and a whole lot of time setting this all up so that anyone who comes within sight of his house can become inspired by the Halloween spirit. 

The bone collector, like most of the 12-foot characters, costs around $400. Bobby Strings — whom I don’t like looking at even out of the corner of my eye; I mean, what is he SMILING at? — put Cote back $309. 

And then there’s the time he puts into it. Cote works at the Walmart distribution center and uses his three-day weekends to work on his Halloween display.  

Like all the others, Cote points out that he’s still got more work to do. There are more clowns to come, for one thing, including the murderous, kid-eating Pennywise. 

There are a whole lot of little touches still to be done before the big night more than a month away. When it’s all over, Cote will Scotchgard all of his creatures and then pack them away in their original boxes. 

But nobody wants to talk about when it’s over. On Jefferson Street, in front of Cote’s ghoul-haunted home, the Halloween season is just beginning. 

Felicia Koch, East Avenue and Montello Street, Lewiston

Koch has wanted a 12-foot skeleton as long as the things have been around. 

To get one, she figured all she had to do was go to one of the store’s websites, add ol’ Bones to her cart, and make a payment of $400 or so. 

Not so fast. The skeletons are so popular, as it turns out, that Koch found herself refreshing her browser over and over in hopes of finding one available. 

“They always sell out,” she says. “They’re that popular.” 

The giant skeletons first appeared in 2020 when Home Depot began displaying them in their stores at the end of summer. Officially named “Skelly” — a low-effort name, if you asked me — those oversized bones quickly became a sensation, and plenty of people seemed perfectly happy to spend $299 for one. 

The price for “Skelly” kept creeping up in later years. By the time Koch got around to buying one, they were closer to $400.

But not to worry. In the end, Felicia got her skeleton, and now the bony beast sits year-round on the porch roof at the East Avenue home she shares with her sister, Christina Robitaille. 

“I am obsessed with him,” Koch tells me. “I’ve been wanting one forever. So now I have one and we just leave him up there and we dress it up for everything. He dresses for Christmas, for summertime and, of course, for Halloween.” 

This skeleton is zip-tied to a pallet atop the porch roof. That’s good enough to keep most of the bones in place, but not all of them. In the vicious wind storm last winter, pieces of Felicia’s beloved skeleton went flying. 

Those body parts were dutifully retrieved and the skeleton was made whole again. It’s just what you have to endure to be part of the big skeleton club.

When I visited Koch and Robitaille’s home last week, the skeleton was hanging out over the porch on a hot late-summer day. He wore a Hawaiian-style shirt and fancy shades and for all the world, he seemed to be grinning down at the summertime world below. 

But that look is soon to change. Koch has other Halloween decor to keep the skeleton company, including three or four animated characters standing six-feet tall. The house at East and Montello is about to be transformed. 

It would have been transformed already if not for Robitaille’s greater sense of restraint. 

“I wanted to decorate already,” Koch says. “But she made me wait just a little bit longer.” 

By the time this story sees print, I imagine things are going to be looking a little more ghoulish up on that hill at East and Montello, and the centerpiece of all of it will be that giant skeleton Felicia pursued with such zeal.

Toby St. Pierre, 470 College St., Lewiston

This year, Toby St. Pierre has one gigantic skeleton standing in his front yard and a whole bunch of smaller ones. Some of the smaller guys are standing, one is sitting, another crouches wickedly atop a shrub.

One is bound by chains, another hangs from a birdcage, yet another is wrapped in the cerements of the grave.

All of these are members of St. Pierre’s growing skeleton family and it was a long time coming.

St. Pierre got that 12-footer just a month ago, as it turns out, and it was a bit of a fluke that he got it at all.

“I have been trying to get one for the past three years but every time I got a lead on one they were sold out,” St. Pierre says. “So just by chance, my wife was at Home Depot and they had three in stock.”

The box containing all the parts of the skeleton measured four feet by four feet by five feet, St. Pierre says, and almost didn’t fit into his wife’s Ford Edge.

But she got it done and delivered the massive skeleton and now Toby St. Pierre is the proud new owner of one of the most popular Halloween pieces in the land.

You’d think he’d be content with that, but no.

“I plan to add one a year for the next few years along with other skeletons of various sizes,” he says. “With any luck, I will find a few that I can mount to the house to give the climbing effect.”

Just by the by, St. Pierre also tossed an antique bicycle into his skeletal mix and for some reason that bike unnerves me.

But this isn’t about me, so let’s just move on.

Kris Lachapelle, 120 Farwell St., Lewiston 

Adorning Kris’ yard, next door to Farwell Elementary School, is a 12-foot skeleton standing tall next to a 12-foot Jack Skellington, star and hero of the classic “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” 

There is also something attempting to crawl on the ground beneath them, but its shape is, for now, amorphous. 

“My sand worm,” says Lachapelle, “no longer holds air, so that’s a bummer.” 

But hey, there is still the skeletal twins out there and when one passes Lachapelle’s house, one never knows what they’ll encounter. Over the past three years, the big skeleton in particular has appeared in several incarnations. 

At Easter, Lachapelle throws a crown of thorns and a robe on the skeleton to create an image of Jesus. At Christmastime, it’s the iconic red and white cap, a long red scarf and like that, the bony figure becomes the most unsettling Santa Claus you’ll ever clap eyes on. 

Lachapelle got the 12-foot skeleton three years ago and Jack Skellington a year after that. His decorations don’t expand to the level of some Halloween enthusiasts, but because of the location, Kris’ skeleton crew gets plenty of attention. 

“We have even gotten fan mail,” he says.  

While I was out checking out Lachapelle’s display, I happened upon another 12-foot abomination just up Farwell Street. At this home, at 66 Farwell Street, a tall, pumpkin faced, skeletal goblin had appeared seemingly overnight.  

So many enormous Halloween decorations, so little time.  

As I was concluding a conversation with Lachapelle about his creatures, he too mentioned that nameless stranger on Sabattus Street who “goes all out” for Halloween. 

Yep. I’m going to have to talk to that guy real soon.

Like . . . right now. 

Aaron and Shannon Jellison, 562 Sabattus St., Lewiston 

If you’ve ever ridden out Sabattus Street to hit Hannaford, Cumberland Farms, Little Joe’s or the Maine Family Credit Union — any place in that area, really — chances are real good that you have seen the work of the Jellisons. 

Believe me, it’s near impossible to miss — when it comes to going big for the holidays, this couple is, arguably, unsurpassed. 

The Jellisons decorate their home, at the corner of Sabattus and Jean streets, for a whole bunch of holidays, Christmas and Easter among them. 

But it’s Halloween where Aaron Jellison really cuts loose. 

And I mean really, really cuts loose. 

“We’ve been doing this since 2017,” Aaron tells me, “and we’re in it for something like 100 grand.” 

When I first stopped by the Jellison home, nobody answered my knock at the door. As I stood there on the steps, with the sun just starting to go down, I felt like a man who has stumbled into the belly of the beast. 

Closest to me, was one of the scariest Halloween figures I’ve ever seen. Here, near enough for me to touch, God help me, was the “Predator of the Night,” a gangling character with outspread wings and glowing eyes. Think of the wing-flapping creature from “The Mothman Prophecy” and you’re halfway there.  

This gargoyle-esque figure was of the type that I’d not seen anywhere else. He’s animated and all of that, of course, but does he really need any of that? His presence alone, in my view, is enough to scare up a Halloween mood in even the stoutest of men. 

Though the gargoyle isn’t as tall as some of his skeleton counterparts, he’s plenty tall at nine feet. His wingspan, meanwhile, measures in at 12 1/2 feet wide. The pointed ears, the vicious smile, the long, clawed fingers . . . do I have to even look at anything else here at the Jellison estate? 

Of course I do. 

Jellison has not one, not two, but THREE of the 12-foot skeletons (one of them blinked at me when I first arrived) and yet in this yard, those big bones seem to settle into the role of accessory rather than main attraction. There’s just too much else going on in Jellison’s morbid display to get hung up on them much. 

Among my favorites, the Ferry of the Dead, a ghastly 8-foot boat commandeered by a towering ferryman (that would be Charon from Greek mythology, I suppose) hauling lost souls across the River Styx and into the underworld. 

All of this is animated, of course. You can watch the ferryman paddling his way into doom with a paddle made of bones and topped by a human skull. Inside the bone-riddled boat are the sad remains of the poor souls being made to take this hellish journey. Their skull faces seem to scream in eternal anguish. 

The ferryman’s face glows red. So do the eyes of the skull capping the ornate bow of the ship. A lantern flickers ominously. Then the ferryman begins to talk and, well . . . it’s time to look at some other stuff. 

The Jellisons’ display is so sprawling, it wraps around the side of the house and overtakes the garage. There is a graveyard scene in there complete with coffin — did the lid of that coffin just creak open? 

There is an inflatable reaper that towers even over the 12-foot skeletons, who stand their grisly guard. There is a stack of red-eyed skulls rising 8 feet off the ground. There is the largest spider I’ve ever seen, a whole bunch of leering, mutated Jack-o’-lantern faces, gargoyles, gravestones and more massive skulls than I can count. 

It’s a lot, I tell you. 

And Jellison is just getting started. 

“It’s probably 30 percent done,” Aaron tells me. “I’m behind the 8-ball right now. I still have the fence to put up, there’s still blow-ups to go on the roof, there’s my giant spiders . . . .  There’s still a lot left that comes out here.” 

On Halloween night, the Jellisons will offer an indoor tour through the house, into the basement and out into the garage. Inside, Aaron tells me, are his best props: professional-grade gadgetry designed to scare the wits out of those who want to be scared. For some of the contraptions inside the house, the Jellisons paid thousands. 

This includes fog jets — not mere fog machines, mind you — capable of shooting faux fog 25 feet in the area. When the Jellisons get going for real, it’s going to get quite foggy indeed on that phantasm-plagued section of Sabattus Street. 

Aaron and his wife have collected all of this high-end gear over the past decade or so. Aaron — who was born on Oct. 30, just so you’ll know — works at Dingley Press. Some people might suspect that he has enormous wealth hidden away to afford so much loot, but it’s not so. 

“It’s not like we won the lottery and bought all this stuff at once,” Aaron says. “We’ve been collecting it through the years. It’s a hobby. It might not have a payout, but it’s something I enjoy doing; something my wife enjoys doing. It brings us together as a family.” 

The Jellisons’ 18-year-old son helps with some of the decorating and then he chips in for the open house on Halloween night. The bigger challenge, for Aaron, is finding the time to get it all done. He’s been recently working extra hours as Dingley to fill in for a co-worker who was injured in an accident. Now Aaron is trying to cram in the rest of his grisly work on rare days off. 

And while he’s got some of the finest decor on the market, Aaron is always refining his inventory. This stuff doesn’t last forever; not as much as the Jellison’s use it. Those inflatables everyone likes so much? They’re vulnerable to wind and they just don’t last long. 

“Blow-ups don’t do well,” Jellison says. “We might get a couple years out of them before they start going soft. We never turn them off. We leave them on. They suck up a lot of power and it’s pretty costly, so we’re trying to move away from blow-ups and toward more hard-shelled stuff.” 

The Jellisons have been well-known in the Lewiston for a lot of years even if nobody seems to know very much about them. Other Halloween decorators mention Aaron’s work with a mix of awe and envy. 

Some feel that the Jellisons go too far. Others insist that if you’re not going big for Halloween, you’re not doing it right. And the Jellisons definitely go big. They don’t just decorate their corner of the world, they haunt an entire corner in a very busy section of Lewiston. 

“The neighbors are supportive,” Aaron says. “They have to deal with a lot. We transform this whole street. We’ve got moving spotlights, so you can imagine by Halloween, their houses get hit a lot with that.” 

Before he had to hustle off for another long shift of work, I asked Aaron if being surrounded by so much Halloween horror ever gives him bad dreams. 

“No,” he said. “I think they do the opposite. They keep evil away and give us good karma.” 

When crowds of visitors are so thick on Halloween night that lines are long along Sabattus and Jean streets, Aaron tells me, that’s when it feels like every penny and every hour he’s put into these grand displays has paid off. If the people are entertained, the Jellisons are happy. 

And soon after I left Aaron’s menagerie of terror, I got word of another 12-foot skeleton that just went up next to a home on nearby Stanley Street. After that, there were whispers of a skeleton dog on Harold Street and a few tips more coming down. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There is just so much Halloween greatness going on out there, and just so little time to see it all.

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