Crisp leaves crunch underneath heavy footsteps as the wind shakes the trees. It is autumn and Halloween is right around the corner waiting for its welcome. Luckily for Nixa, plenty of people celebrate and welcome Halloween.
One house in particular, belonging to Eric Delzell, is well known throughout the city of Nixa for having extreme Halloween decorations; more specifically for its plethora of pumpkins. His Halloween house is located at 401 S. Main St., Nixa, Mo.
Initially, Delzell’s goal was to put 100 pumpkins out on the porch in order to fill the space. This year marks the seventh year of decorating and Delzell has now passed the mark of 1,000 pumpkins.
“I know that it is probably somewhere around 1,100. … I don’t really know how many I got between last Halloween and this Halloween exactly, but it’s up there so it’ll be more pumpkins than I’ve done [before],” Delzell said.
Throughout his time collecting pumpkins, Delzell has used many methods to acquire new decorations.
“I’ve traveled for stuff, ordered a lot of decorations online, and people have dropped off pumpkins, so that helps,” Delzell said. “My favorite things are probably my vintage pumpkins that I put on the porch, the old stuff from like the ’80s and ’90s,”
Delzell is passionate about his pumpkin collection.
“Trying to raise the bar for myself is what probably drives me to keep doing it more and more to a greater extreme,” Delzell said.
While Delzell’s house may get the most attention during the season of frights, he is not the only person in the city who enjoys celebrating Halloween.
NHS senior Thomasina Brown sets up what she calls a miniature haunted house in her garage each year.
“It started when we were in COVID,” Brown said. “… We’ve kept that as a tradition ever since. The past two years, we’ve done what we call a ‘carnevil.’ We have a ton of clown animatronics that we set up and then last year we put them in our garage.”
While freshman Hailey Rosati enjoys celebrating the spookier side of things, she looks more to the atmosphere as Halloween approaches.
“Everything is in between like the weather, the smells, the people, the feelings — it’s not bad but for me it’s the best,” Rosati said.
Rosati’s favorite tradition approaching Halloween is getting together with family and friends to carve pumpkins.
“We get together, all of my family and friends, and we buy a bunch of pumpkins and we set out these big long tables all throughout the house and we carve them however we want to and my dad makes like 10 pounds of chili and we all just have a good time,” Rosati said.
Delzell has traveled many places to collect pumpkins and gathers inspiration from displays outside of Nixa.
However, Delzell said his primary excitement comes from bringing happiness to others during the season and being able to celebrate in a way that almost everyone can enjoy.
“It brings a lot of happy, you meet a lot of people. Everybody talks about the kids, and the kids do love it, sure, but the people that are here are adults.” Delzell said. “The people that swarm my fence that are here the whole month, they’re adults … so the fact that it brings that back for people [is what makes it worth it].”
The holiday brings about a unique feeling in people.
“It’s just a time where you can be anything you want to be and go out and scare people and have a good time and eat a bunch of candy without feeling guilty about it,” Rosati said.