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Would you live on a Halloween block? These Hackensackers live for it.
By
James Ramsay
Published Oct 29, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET
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Emily Nadal/Gothamist
By
James Ramsay
Published Oct 29, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET
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This column originally appeared in the Looped In NYC newsletter. Sign up here.
Maybe you carve a jack-o’-lantern or wrap some fake spiderwebs around your railing. Maybe you even bought one of those 10-foot-tall werewolves from Home Depot. On most blocks, that’s plenty of holiday spirit.
But Clinton Place in Hackensack, New Jersey, is not most blocks. It’s a Halloween block.
A dozen life-size killer clowns. A field of dead bodies. A chapel that’s been occupied by Satan. Massive plywood cutouts of every character from “Finding Nemo.” During a recent visit to Clinton Place between Prospect and Summit Avenues, we witnessed something for everyone – and almost everyone was doing something.
“We all help each other out,” said Glynnis Doda, whose stately front yard had a “Wizard of Oz” theme on one side and a gory graveyard scene on the other. If a neighbor is short on decorations, she’s ready to pitch in.
“ I have enough dead bodies here for a couple of lawns,” she said.
According to Doda’s older sister, Andee Post, this all started about three decades ago, when the owners of a large Queen Anne home hung a spider above their front door.
“When the kids would come up on the porch and trick-or-treat, they would turn around to walk out, and this spider would drop down off the balcony,” said Post.
If scaring trick-or-treaters is fair game, there are no spooky surprises for prospective homeowners.
Post, who’s also a local real estate agent, said that in the spirit of the National Association of Realtors’ Code of Ethics, home sellers need to disclose if a house is on a block that celebrates to this magnitude. (The law does not require sellers to mention if a house is haunted.)
“ When a house comes up for sale, they wanna buy so they can decorate,” Doda added.
Charlie Avallone was one of those buyers 22 years ago. His Satan chapel, functioning guillotine, coffin and spiky black picket fence are all handmade and remain carefully preserved. (“I got a two-car garage. No cars.”)
“All the commercial stuff, it’s nice,” he said, referring to his new next-door neighbor’s giant Grim Reaper. “But we started before that stuff was available.”
When Ryan McCallister moved to Clinton Place in 2021, he wasn’t just joining a Halloween block — he and his husband bought the original spider-over-the-porch house. The move might’ve come with added pressure, but it also came with an assist.
“The previous owners left us a lot of skeletons, and so that clearly is why we have a lot of skeletons,” he explained.
On Halloween itself, Clinton Place goes wild. The block shuts down to cars and thousands of people come to trick-or-treat. Avallone gives out 3,600 Dum Dums. Doda said dancers from a local dance school are putting on a “Thriller” performance this year.
But even on a balmy Wednesday evening a few weeks before the holiday, families were strolling up and down the block, taking in the decorations.
Kerry Millward, who grew up in Hackensack and now lives with her husband and three children in Henley-on-Thames, England, said visiting Clinton Place is a decades-old tradition.
“I grew up coming to this street as a kid, and now I can come back 30 years later and bring my own children here,” she said.
But for a kid visiting from abroad, all-out Halloween decorations may not even be the most impressive thing the Garden State has to offer. When I asked Millward’s oldest child, Elodie, how she likes New Jersey compared to back home, she lit up.
“There’s more shopping centers!”
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