After 12 years of Octobers, evolving to a curation of 31 annual days of ever-changing playful and tongue-in-cheek, but hopefully relevant and recognizable art ‘exhibits with 5 skeletons’ done entirely by cover of night, our epic show is coming to an end.
2024’s October will be the final of our 12-year show.
As you can imagine, our “staff” and friends have become attached to the skeletons and so we are very excited for the good news that the skeleton crew have been adopted and will continue their annual hijinks just down the street! Visit them from 2025-on at 874 on our same street!
Thanks to our neighbors for your support & enthusiasm over the years & to the skeletons for the many, many memories as our kids grew up in this house to a new display of skeletons, almost every morning of every October!
Check out the pages of this website (menu, top right) to see what they have been up to through 2024 (reels on Insta: mdwh).
This site is dedicated to my five friendly skeletons and their adventures in the month of October
What’s up with the skeletons?
When my kids were smaller, I decided to have a little fun with spooky for halloween. I’m not very big on crafting or seasonal decor rotation but I do appreciate funny… and spooky… preferably combined, but only at Halloween.
My first two 6-foot, floppy skeletons
Before that particular Halloween, kiddo-carved pumpkins were about as big as I would go before I would go home… or inside my home, leaving the lopsided, triangle-eyed faced orbs glowing on the porch with candles replacing their squash-and-seed innards.
That particular year… when was it now? 2012? Along with a slow stroll down the aisles in Target came inspiration. For the first time that I noticed, they sold 6-foot skeletons next to the Halloween costumes. Floppy, dangly 6-foot skeletons, but still, pretty realistically skeletal…. And an idea was born.
I purchased two of them and took them home and set them up… not in a dreadful, tortured, scary rigor mortis, but in a manner better suited for my mood that day with 3 little boys under 9… sipping drinks in the sun, wearing sombreros!!
Since then, the October Skeleton show has evolved but two things have stayed the same – I always set the skeletons up in the dark and the skeletons are always doing something silly.
Why do I set them up in the dark? The tradition of the skeletons is a love note from me to my kids. A reminder that life is sweet and fun, that we should make an effort to turn dark things light and to laugh.
I always told my kids (with a wink) that the skeletons moved at night and stayed in place during the day, so whatever the skeletons did after the kids went to bed, was how they were frozen the next day.
Needless to say, this meant the skeletons had to have multiple poses leading up to halloween, just to keep the kids on their toes.
Over the years, my sons have caught on, grown up and sometimes help set them up, but we keep the tradition alive for the other kids and neighbors on my street who stop by and appreciate the Skellies’ hijinks, and just because it’s funny – at least while I still have 1 kid at home, after that, the bones are going to a new good home!
The tradition has evolved by now into a 30-day production. No more than that (and sometimes less), it’s too exhausting!
On the first day of October every year, the skeletons emerge, crawling from the ground.
(A sly peek might elicit a glimpse of the skeletons hanging around, having a laugh or a drink at my dining room table for the last few days of September!)
After that, it’s up to 25-30 daily or semi-daily activities and poses in my yard, mostly doing everyday things that our family does, only worse. Because they’re skeletons.
On the first day of November, they are gone. See ya next year!
My scenes showcasing the first two floppy, bony friends evolved as soon as the manufacturers started to make 5-foot rigid, articulating skeletons – so much easier to pose! I’ve added to my collection, figured out how to anchor and stake them, replaced several (many broken bones!) and even gotten pets and other creatures over the years. Now my retinue features 5 articulating skeletons (there are 5 members in my family) and their 3 dogs (which we have too) and some other bony friends.
Their poses always end on halloween in costume with candy for the neighbor kids and the penultimate pose is always a remake of an album cover.
Here’s to the magic and fun of holidays and making memories.
Feel free to let my ideas inspire you! Share your own! If you live down the street from me in Loveland, OH, stop by!
Instagram reels of the skeletons can be found at instagram @mdwh
