“Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. The Carriage held but just Ourselves and Immortality.”
– Emily Dickinson
‘OUT-BOO YOUR NEIGHBORS’ WINNERS:
If you’ve been through Carnegie over the past three months, you may have seen the elaborate, ever-changing Halloween display at Rob and Rebecca Lee’s Flynn Street home.
With a skeletal, horse-driven carriage that seems to leap from the famous Emily Dickinson poem, to the 20-foot tall skeleton bursting out of the cursed pet cemetery which has overtaken their yard and the neighboring houses on either side, the Lee family is the winner of West Hills Gazette’s 2024 ‘Out-Boo Your Neighbors’ photo contest.
Rebecca said the couple use their Halloween display as an opportunity to help raise money for charity. Through Carnegie Elementary School Teacher, Julie Lewis, the Lees identified a family that needs help. Rebecca said she plans to match donations up to $500.
“Whatever the community wants to donate goes to that family,” Rebecca said.
Growing up in Mt. Lebanon, Rebecca developed her love of Halloween and the way the community came together to create mischief on Devil’s Night.
“We TP’d the entire street on devil’s night, the entire street (was) covered in toilet paper,” Rebecca said.
Since moving into their Carnegie home two years ago, the couple have created elaborate holiday displays which evolve with new ghoulish attractions every day in the lead up to Halloween, through Thanksgiving leading into a staggering Christmas spectacle.
“We have a huge transition this year. We have a 20-foot reindeer, he’s going to go out with the 20-foot skeleton, we’re going to have him wrangled in with Christmas lights,” Rebecca said.
Rebecca, a night nurse at Merakey Allegheny Valley School, said her husband, Rob, is the “brains and muscle,” behind their festive extravaganza. Rob, who owns Lee’s Plumbing, is the technical wizard making the inanimate come to life.
“I don’t like store bought stuff. I try to modify it to make it my own,” Rob said, explaining that he changes store-bought props so their heads move, and he creates other remote activated features. “Anything I can do to make it ours.”
Rob’s said his wife drives their Halloween fixation and he’s more of an “enabler,” but he’s always had an interest in homemade costumes since he was a kid growing up in Brighton Heights.
“My great-grandparents would always enter us in contests (with) homemade costumes,” Rob said. He remembered an award-winning hot air balloon costume they created that had the banner “Flying High for Brighton Heights.”
“I couldn’t figure out how they did it,” Rob said.
The couple have two adult children, and two still living at home. Their 15-year-old son, Dustin, helps his father with installation. Dustin said his friends are surprised by the Halloween decorations.
“One of them is scared of it,” Dustin said.
“It got really big this year,” Rebecca said. ”We even added two new big ones today so now they’re in the neighbor’s yard. It’s definitely an obsession.”
Rebecca said many of the kids in the neighborhood are frightened, too, but there’s always a surprising contingent of children who aren’t.
“It really amazes me, these little, tiny, tots; they’re mesmerized,” Rebecca said.
When she sees a young visitor who isn’t afraid, Rebecca said she thinks, “You’re a child of my soul.”
CONTEST RUNNERS-UP
Ashley and Timothy McGrath’s “Beetlejuice House”
– Glass Road, Robinson Township
Ken Krall’s “House of Horrors”
– Coraopolis Road, Kennedy Township
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