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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WCIA) — Halloween is the time of year where creativity meets creepy, but one Champaign house is adding a bit of infamy and ingenuity to the mix as well.
“Doesn’t everybody love Halloween? Everybody loves Halloween,” said Carrie Saunders.
The Saunders household has a unique angle to Halloween. Carrie Saunders and her husband, Brian, have created and maintained homemade animatronic decorations for the last 20 years.
“When the kids were little, you know, they would see things at Menards and Lowe’s and would bring little things home. And we got tired of them just falling apart,” Saunders said. “So. we started making them.”
Each decoration in their backyard graveyard is mostly created from scratch — with the exception of the masks.
“Then we start building the body, PVC, two-by-fours, bolts, screws, nuts; all kinds of different motors,” Saunders said. “And, yeah, then we just piece it together until we find one we like.”
The final step of the process comes when a historically infamous name is attached to each figure.
“I love Marie Laveau with her husband over there from New Orleans, “Saunders said. “She was the voodoo queen, so, you know, she was kind of a little creepy, scary. I like her. And I always loved Jimmy Hoffa because we don’t know. And it’s a good joke, right? And we got D.B. Cooper up on the thing.”
For Saunders, it’s a lighthearted Halloween tradition where fright meets fun.
“This comes down to just figuring out what’s going to work, and it’s just trying to hodgepodge it together,” Saunders added.