The Halloween Skeletons Are Busy (8 Photos)

Halloween Skeletons With Somewhere to Be

Most yard skeletons just stand there. These ones don’t. They play football, win medals, wait for the doctor and go boating, and in New Orleans whole front lawns turn into stage sets for them every October.

More: These Are Pumpkins (10 Photos)

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🥇 Medal Ceremony — Sonoma, California, USA 🇺🇸

Gold in the middle with both arms up, silver and bronze on the lower steps, all three with medals on blue ribbons. A skeleton dog lies at the foot of the podium like it came last. Sarah Stierch photographed it in Sonoma in October 2024, two months after the Paris Olympics ended.

📷 Photo and cover crop: Sarah Stierch / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

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🏈 Number 78 — Mid-City, New Orleans, USA 🇺🇸

A 12-foot skeleton fills the whole porch of this house in Mid-City, wearing a Tulane football jersey that barely covers its ribs. The orange eyes glow, the white flowers in front make it look like it’s standing in a garden, and it is clearly ready for game day.

💡 Skelly Fact: Home Depot’s giant skeleton debuted in 2020 at $299 and has sold out every year since. In 2024 it got a 7-foot skeleton dog.

📷 Photo and cover crop: Bart Everson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

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🩺 Still Waiting — Medical Office in New Orleans, USA 🇺🇸

An orange skeleton with a pumpkin for a head sits slumped in the corner chair of a doctor’s waiting room, next to the water cooler. Anyone who has waited for an appointment knows exactly how it feels.

📷 Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🦇 Bryan Bat — St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, USA 🇺🇸

A skeleton with gauze bat wings hangs on the iron fence of the Skeleton House on St. Charles Avenue, under a sign that turns it into a pun. Behind it, the lawn is full of more skeletons, each with its own joke.

💡 Bone Fact: Louellen Berger, known as the “Queen of Halloween,” has been setting up the display since about 2002. It now has more than 100 skeletons, and a couple have even moved into the neighbor’s yard.

📷 Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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⚰️ Lying in State Street — Uptown New Orleans, USA 🇺🇸

Around the corner from the same house, a skeleton lies on a draped table at the curb of State Street. The traffic cone next to it carries the jokes: “Corpse of Engineers” and “FEMUR,” aimed at agencies every New Orleanian has opinions about.

📷 Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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🛶 Ferry Service — Lakeview, New Orleans, USA 🇺🇸

In the same front yard, a hooded reaper stands in a black and gold boat parked on the lawn, pole in hand, with a skull figurehead on the bow and a pile of skulls inside. The ferryman is ready to go. All that is missing is the water.

💡 Kraken Fact: The Soliman family’s display grew during the COVID lockdown, and the name came from a Reuters photographer.

📷 Photo (cropped): Infrogmation of New Orleans / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🚜 Road Roller Driver — Panguitch, Utah, USA 🇺🇸

A skeleton sits at the wheel of a rusty old road roller, with a windmill and the mountains behind it. According to the photographer, this one isn’t a Halloween decoration at all: it stays in this yard in Panguitch all year, along with dinosaurs, a sasquatch and a crashed flying saucer.

💡 Town Fact: In their first winter, 1864–65, seven Panguitch settlers crossed a snowbound mountain by laying quilts on the snow and walking on them.

📷 Photo: puuikibeach / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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🧗 The Great Escape — Lakeview, New Orleans, USA 🇺🇸

Skeletons crawl out of the flower bed between small gravestones, and one is already halfway over the fence. This is a corner of the Kraken House in Lakeview, a family display known for its giant inflatable tentacles.

📷 Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)