A mum-of-two has turned her home into an extravagant haunted house for three months of the year in and around Halloween. The transformation, which saw Deslee Barker take 25 days off work in a row, features a paper mache zombie with her late mum’s false teeth.
Before Deslee’s mum, Gloria, died in 2018, she told her daughter she wanted her teeth to be put to good use in the Halloween decorations. For the last 20 years, supermarket cashier Deslee, 56, has decorated her house top-to-bottom complete with skeletons, bats and a web cave.
Not satisfied with just putting up the decorations for Halloween month, the house is transformed from August to October. On the night of October 31, Deslee has around 1,000 people visit her house, with cars queuing up for four kilometres down the road.
She also dresses up for work in Halloween costumes, complete with full face paint, in the three days leading up to the big day. As such, she has been dubbed “the crazy Halloween lady” of her hometown, Pottsville in Australia.
Every year, the Halloween fanatic begins preparing her house on August 1, and says her husband of 25 years, Geoff, 50, and her two sons, Jack, 24, and Jessie, 21, are used to her decorations. “I say to my husband, you get to go jet skiing for 12 months of the year, and my children get to play video games and have fun for 12 months,” she explained.
“Why should I wait to celebrate Halloween? I really argue with it.”
Making her own props out of paper mache, Deslee added: “I made a skeleton a few years ago that was probably seven and a half feet. It’s a lot cheaper that way and a lot more fun.”
However, her most unusual feature has seen a paper mache zombie don her late mum Gloria’s teeth. She said: “She told me just before we knew she was going to pass that she was going to give me her teeth because she knew I made all these weird things.
“She said, ‘Put them in a zombie’, so that’s what I did. Every year people comment on them, and I say, ‘They’re my mum’s teeth,’ and they laugh.”
Among her creative and eye-catching outfits she has showcased for work have included the lead character from the comedy horror movie Beetlejuice, and a clown with a full face of terrifying make-up. Such is her passion for the spooky holiday, she even got a haunted house tattoo on her arm in August 2022.
The cashier also carries business cards around with her at work, ready for when she hears anyone utter Halloween, prompting her to give out the card which includes her name, address and times trick-or-treaters are welcome. Deslee cites her love for all things horror stemming from when she owned a fish and chicken shop, Fish and Chicks, at 29-years-old.
Largely due to the free advertising, as it would often get them in the local paper, she decorated the shop’s windows for every occasion. She said: “I still have all my ‘Happy Halloween’ signs that we used 30 years ago and all the bats we cut out. I put them up every year at home, and it just snowballed after that.”
She subsequently began decorating her house in the late ‘90s, adding: “I started doing it big at home for a day or two, and the trick-or-treaters would look around me when I opened the door. I would ask if they wanted to come in and have a look, and we had about 20 or 30.”
Word started to get around, and Deslee now has around 1,000 people stopping by her home on Halloween night. Trick-or-treaters arrive from 4pm to late, and she then has a huge party on the closest Saturday with 40 of her closest friends and family until 5am.
“My childhood best friend, who I’ve known since I was 15, always comes and we watch the sun come up, and we usually have a dance,” she added. To prepare her four-bedroom house this year, Deslee has taken 25 days off work in a row.
Her latest set of decorations include a life-size version of Carrie, from the 1976 film, in her bathroom. She continued: “The first four days, we will be getting everything ready, like putting Carrie into the shower and emptying the bathroom so my boys can use my shower until Halloween.
“I made Carrie out of paper mache last year, and she’s awesome. I love her, and I’ve actually got a bucket of blood coming down from her head as well.”
“I have to move my husband’s chair that he sits in every night because it’s just in the way of my decorations. Plus, I want to build a big body on that. I’ve got a severed head that screams, and I want to attach it to a body instead of hanging him from the roof.
“So, I’ll build his body in my web cave and then I’m going to put him into my husband’s chair. It’s a visual feast. There’s stuff everywhere, and people don’t know where to look.”
However, extravagant decorations inevitably bring high costs, but Deslee said she “tries really hard not to think about” it.
"I know I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars just in the past few months, but it does cost me a lot. I reuse everything as long as it’s still intact. I’ve been using some things for over 10 years now.”
The mammoth task of deconstructing her creation then commences on November 1, as she spends at least eight hours a day for a week completing the process. I get really annoyed when I have to take all this down, and I go back to my boring white house,” she said.
“So I get away with keeping some Halloween decorations tastefully in the lounge.”
