Jack-o’-Lanterns with crazy faces pop out from behind inflatable giant spiders and larger-than-life monsters on front lawns brimming with tombstones and hanging ghosts and ghouls. Witches on broomsticks and scary silhouettes of flying bats and leaping black cats materialize from haunted cemeteries of chilling zombie graves.
Halloween is here, and it’s Big in La La Land. It’s a serious competition to create the spookiest and creepiest front lawns in the neighborhood. Neighbors go all out spending upwards of $5,000 in an auspicious attempt to wow and one-up each other. It’s not just lawns, though. People decorate their dogs, their cats, their baby carriages.