Forget vampires and warlocks: West Hartford man’s Halloween display centers on real-life terrors
Death is the a key part of Matthew Warshauer’s outsized Halloween display in West Hartford this year, but it’s not portrayed with ghouls and zombies.
Instead, two large panels of photos face out at North Main Street: One shows about 20 Americans who’ve died of COVID-19, the other shows Black Americans killed by police.
Despite a few Halloween flourishes, the display is a decidedly somber version of the politically focused exhibitions that Warshauer puts up each year. And, it’s a bit less partisan than usual, at least on the surface.
“This year I didn’t put Trump or his name anywhere on the display. I decided to focus on two major issues rather than the election — I didn’t want to fuel the anger that’s already in existence,” Warshauer said Tuesday.
Over the past 17 years, Warshauer has made his home a Halloween landmark by putting up enormous displays. But his creations are never centered on witches, goblins or orange and black lights; instead, they are tableaus exploring a left-leaning perspective on national events.
Warshauer’s 2016 display was featured by Fortune magazine: A high wall topped with faux barbed wire ran the width of his property, with characters marked “hope,” “family values” and “work ethic” locked out. He called it “Trump’s wall,” and on one section painted a rendition of the then-candidate in clown makeup saying “I want you to join the circus."
The next year, he got international attention with a massive Donald Trump-themed pirate ship. An effigy of James Comey walked the plank, an Abraham Lincoln skeleton in a rowboat down below held a sign reading “What’s become of my party?”
Warshauer, a celebrated history professor at Central Connecticut State University, began putting up lavish — but traditional — Halloween decorations after he and his wife bought their home in 1998.
But in 2003, he was so incensed by the American-led invasion of Iraq that he switched to a political theme: Life-sized effigies of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in suits, but with pants that appeared to be ablaze.
The transition away from Halloween make-believe seemed natural, he said.
“In a world with so much chatter and so many voices — whether its digital, online or television — we are just bombarded with an awful lot of information. This was a way to say something very, very clear,” he said.
The vast majority of his neighbors are OK with the displays, he said, not all. A local resident complained two years ago on Facebook that the display should be shut down over zoning rules, and the more heavily publicized anti-Trump messages usually draw backlash, he said.
“I received threatening emails and phone calls from the Trump pirate ship, and the president of my university got some,” Warshauer said. “I’m not hurting anyone or sending a hateful message, I’m expressing my political views — sometimes in an admittedly provocative way, but always peaceful. The day we’re unable to express ourselves and our political views is the day our democracy has truly died.”
Warshauer said he’s heard people driving past shout obscenities or slurs at him, but said more than 99% of reactions are positive.
“The whole idea is to spark a conversation, and I’ve had an unbelievable number of fantastic conversations with this,” he said.
One segment of this year’s display shows newspaper ads from the 1780s seeking to track down runaway slaves.
“This African American woman came up, she saw it and she was just dumbfounded. Then a young Black man got out of his car and walked up, he said ‘I saw the picture of George Floyd, I have goosebumps.’ He gave me a hug,” Warshauer said. “It was a really emotionally charged moment. Those moments are why I do this.”
Don Stacom can be reached at dstacom@courant.com.
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