For a third year, a house on Highland Avenue in Franklin is embracing the Halloween season with a yard full of frights for a good cause.
Matt Conner and Laura Conner are raising money for St. Jude by creating a scary spectacle in their front and backyards, full of Halloween decorations including larger-than-life terror figures, tombstones, skeletons and more. As of Tuesday, the couple was a little less than $100 away from their fundraising goal this year.
Matt Conner, 49, said he has been decorating for Halloween ever since he was 12 years old.
“I just love Halloween,” he said. “They took me to my very first haunted house when I was like five or six and, of course, to a five or six year old, that first haunted house, it ain’t gonna be topped ever, not in your five or six-year-old mind.”
The Conners started elaborately decorating their home at 155 Highland Ave. 10 years ago. It started with just inside decorations, including a full-size Headless Horseman and several werewolves. However, it kept growing and growing and the couple decided to put the decorations outside in 2020, Matt Conner said.
“What’s all outside is not everything,” Laura Conner, 45, said. “He’s got a lot more.”
In 2022, the Conners decided they would raise money for St. Jude through Halloween decorating in a fundraiser called Skeletons for St. Jude. According to the Skeletons for Hope website, Skeletons for St. Jude is a nationwide effort to raise over $100,000 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital with a goal of breaking a million dollars by 2025. The fundraiser started in 2020 in Holly Springs, North Carolina.
The Conners wanted to donate to St. Jude because their family has been affected by cancer and Laura Conner said Matt Conner came across it and decided he wanted to do it.
“You’re all the time seeing commercials about St. Jude on TV and all of that,” Laura Conner said. “If we can do something, whether it be something small like what we’re doing, any little thing helps. It’s for kids.”
This is the third year the Conners have participated in Skeletons for St. Jude. The first year, the Conners raised $700 and last year they raised maybe half of that, Matt Conner said. This year, the goal is to raise $500 and on Monday, the couple had raised $405. They will be raising money until Oct. 31 and people can donate by scanning a QR code posted at their house.
Matt Conner said she thinks some people think if they can’t donate a lot, they shouldn’t donate at all. But the Conners believe every little bit helps.
“We know that people are having it rough. We know it because we are,” Laura Conner said. “But even if everybody that drove by to look at it or whatever, even if somebody just donated $1, that’s helping.”
In the Conner household, raising money for St. Jude involves Halloween figures taller than the house overlooking the street, a cobwebbed arch with spiders, a backyard graveyard, climbing skeleton corpses and more. They have spent between $7,000 to $10,000 on decorations over the years, Matt Conner said.
“It’s a lot of fun doing it, it’s a lot of fun decorating,” Laura Conner said.
Laura Conner’s favorite decoration is what she calls “the puker,” a skeleton sitting over a barrel with green liquid coming out of its mouth. Matt Conner’s favorite decoration is a tall figure with wings.
“You know, when I was 12 years old, I would have never dreamt that they’d be making this kind of stuff that they’re making nowadays for Halloween,” he said.
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The Conners put their own flair on some of the decorations, including “the puker.” Whenever a skeleton breaks, Matt Conner will “corpse it” where he melts plastic on the skeleton to make it look like it is rotting. Most of the gravestones in the Conner’s backyard are homemade out of wood to be better able to withstand the wind.
For Matt Conner, the decorating process is challenging but fun. When it stops being fun, he will stop doing it. His favorite part about decorating for Halloween is seeing all the people enjoy it.
“You would be surprised. I’ve noticed here lately that the elderly people love it more than the kids do,” he said. “A few years ago … there were actually two little women in a car and one of them, she looked at me, the passenger, she looked at me. She said, ‘I want you to know I’m a devout Christian but I love what you do here.’”
With kids, Laura Conner said they see all kinds of responses to the decorations.
“You have some that, they love it, and then you’ve got some that … you’re yelling for them to come and get their candy because they don’t want to go near anybody,” she said.
On Halloween, which is Thursday, about seven people will be scaring people and passing out candy at the home.
Costumed family and friends will dress up and go into the streets to scare people. Among the scary bunch is typically a person with a chainsaw.
This year, Matt Conner said they will make an effort to tone down the spook factor when they see small children come to the house. However, they will be happy to scare small children if their parents or chaperone say it is OK.
