The graveyard at the McCarty home.

MERIDIAN, Miss. — Tommie McCarty has decorated his central Mississippi home for Halloween for more than a decade. But for McCarty, decorating doesn’t simply mean hanging a few cobwebs with fake spiders or setting out a few jack-o’-lanterns. The extensive decorations at McCarty’s home encompass both the interior and the exterior. 

“It’s been a passion of mine my whole life,” the Meridian, Mississippi, homeowner said. “It’s just fun. I’ve always loved Halloween.”

Inside the home, the kitchen, family room, sunroom and guest bathroom get the full Halloween treatment. Skulls line the curtains covering the windows, skeletons serve as candleholders or hover in the corners and fake rats skitter across the table. McCarty estimated it took about a week’s time to decorate each of the home’s interior spaces, which he started doing in mid-September.

Outside, 44 blow-up Halloween characters and scenes cover the yard, spilling into the yards of bemused neighbors. Once the weather cools, McCarty typically spends a weekend organizing the ghosts rising from graves and spooky pumpkins. He inflates the blow-ups for four hours each evening, from 6 p.m. until 10 p.m. 

McCarty had difficulty estimating how much money he’d spent gathering decorations over the decade.

“It’s been years of collecting,” he said. “Every year, I add to my collection.”

The National Retail Foundation projects consumers will spend $8.4 billion on Halloween this year. According to the foundation’s annual survey, Americans plan to spend $2.4 billion on decorations alone. 

Although McCarty decorates for Christmas on a larger scale — at one point decorating with more than 30 Christmas trees — and has an affinity for both Christmas and Halloween, it’s his love of latter that shines this fall.

“We (decorate) for Christmas because I like it. It’s pretty,” he said. “But Halloween is fun and it’s meant to be humorous and it’s meant to be over-the-top. It’s just a day when everybody gets to be something that they’re not in real life.”

Some, McCarty said, might see Halloween as a satanic holiday, but he maintains that he doesn’t fall into that category.

“I don’t feel it’s like that. I feel like Halloween is a holiday for kids,” he said. “To go collect candy and just be able to have fun in general. I just love to see the kids have a great time at Halloween and that’s why I do it.”

Downard writes for the Meridian, Mississippi Star.