Halloween displays tv#

Randhava has lived in Evanston for more than three decades and said she’s seen a handful of similar decorations every year. Resident Heidi Randhava, who also writes for the RoundTable, said the city should at the very least instruct residents not to hang false bodies from trees within those guidelines. None of the guidelines address public-facing decorations. to 7 p.m.) and COVID-19 safety measures (including social distancing and cloth mask use). This year’s list sets up, for example, official Trick-or-Treat hours (4 p.m. “Clearly, that was not a good idea.”Įvanston establishes gui delines for Halloween annually. “(The intent of the display was) to do something different and scary for Halloween,” said Dunteman, whose family celebrates Halloween avidly every year. Dunteman was at work when she took the call, and nobody was home to take down the display.ĭunteman said she hung up the display a couple of weeks ago “strictly with Halloween goggles on.” She said she’s upset the display caused harm. He didn’t specifically ask her to remove the display, Dunteman said.

Peter Braithwaite (2nd) called resident Angela Dunteman to let her know residents had expressed concern about the display and to inform her of the city ordinance. Prior to the display’s removal that day, Ald. On private property, however, “(displays) would have to violate a city ordinance or law to be removed,” Deignan told Evanston RoundTable. When the city responds to a violation of the ordinance, Deignan said employees usually return the property to the resident. A city ordinance prohibits residents from hanging items on those trees. In this specific situation, the display qualified for removal because it was hanging from public parkway trees, Deignan wrote in an email to The Daily. The employees also removed a neighbor’s parkway tree display that Gardner said featured severed hands and legs. After knocking on the door to no response, municipal employees took them down from the parkway trees and moved them to the resident’s property, according to Patrick Deignan, the city’s communications manager. “I’ve seen some crazy displays that are pretty disturbing, but that has deep symbolic meaning.”īy the time Gardner arrived at the parkway to look for herself, the bodies lay on the ground in a resident’s front yard. “The city should think about banning the display of human bodies swinging from a tree, whether from their feet or their neck,” Gardner said.

In Evanston, some residents are banding together to push for stronger regulations on decor for the holiday. Pushback against hanging Halloween decorations has unfurled on a national scale for years. “Immediately, that takes me to the trauma of generations and generations.”īlack horror scholars strongly discourage people from decorating with nooses and other hanging objects, because hanging is associated with a history of racist terror in the United States. “It sends chills up my spine to see something hanging up a tree that’s supposed to be a human,” Gardner said. Gardner, who posted the images to Facebook Wednesday, said she instantly thought of Billie Holiday’s 1939 song “Strange Fruit,” a protest song that likens the bodies of publicly lynched Black people to fruit hanging from trees. Gardner, a community journalist, received a photo tip from a source earlier that day: at least two blow-up bodies wrapped in black plastic were hanging by chains from trees near a park where children play.

Halloween displays tv#

When resident and Evanston Live TV founder Meleika Gardner saw the Halloween display in person, her back clenched in pain. Content warning: This story contains mentions of lynching.