In 2017, Nate Taylor found a three-word offer on Craigslist for free Halloween decorations. It took three truck trips to bring everything home. Nearly a decade later, that secondhand collection has become a local attraction that drew an estimated 18,000 visitors last October and led to a legal dispute with city officials in Michigan. Taylor, a 49-year-old part-time DJ and stay-at-home father, spends weeks setting up detailed Halloween displays outside his Cape Cod-style home near Kid's Creek Park in Traverse City. Known as Dead Ends on Spruce, the annual attraction features 25 moving Halloween figures, called animatronics, ranging from 6 to 12 feet tall. They include a 7-foot werewolf and a 12-foot headless horseman. The display also uses 40 speakers to play sounds of rain and thunder, along with a custom fog system that runs through 400 feet of trenches in the yard.
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