It is fitting that Hillcrest Avenue, with its tradition of going all-out on spooky decor, is Louisville’s “Halloween Street.” Even Google Maps has Hillcrest Avenue labeled as “Hillcrest Avenue Halloween Street.” Crowds of people–an estimated 75,000 on average during the month–line the sidewalks of Hillcrest every October to see yard after yard of skeleton displays, graveyards and full blown light shows. With lots of fun, though, comes with lots of work, as shown by residents of the street.
“It’s a lot of fun, but there are a lot of people and they touch a lot of stuff. But I really like it, I love building it all,” said Aidan Schmidt, a freshman at St. Xavier High School. It’s Schmidt and his family’s first year living on Hillcrest, and he’s already taken responsibility for his family’s front yard displays. From Frankenstein to Michael Myers to an electric chair, Schmidt has filled the yard with an abundance of scary decor, even constructing some of them himself out of simple hardware store materials and items he has found in his house.
(Katie Dikes)
The decorating and visiting hasn’t always been populated by young people, says Michael Ghrist, a Hillcrest resident who has been decorating his front yard for 27 years. Some of his handmade displays this year include an Al Capone gangster scene featuring an of-the-era car, as well as a homemade Titanic ship.
“When we got here in [19]79, it was mostly old people in their 80s, and I think the first year we had six trick or treaters. And then when we started decorating and everybody started jumping in on it… it brought everybody close,” he said. Now, according to Ghrist, the street gets upwards of 2,500 to 3,000 children trick-or-treating every Halloween, not to mention their accompanying family members.
What began as a competition and celebration between neighbors on the 100 to 300 blocks of Hillcrest in the late 1990s has become a citywide attraction. Ghrist and other Hillcrest residents say that now is the perfect time to visit their street, before the Halloween rush.
“There is nobody afraid to come up here. All walks of life, all races…you know. It’s just an open community and it’s really nice to have that… it brings everybody together…” said Ghrist. The city seems to have agreed because year after year, Louisvillians of all ages gather to enjoy the creepiest and the cutest of Halloween decorations.
“Come and see it, it’s a lot of fun, and it’s really cool,” said Schmidt.
