5 Incredible Halloween Displays by Rhode Islanders

Residents in Warwick and East Greenwich turn on the fear factor with homemade Halloween attractions in their front yards.

October 8, 2020

Jamie Coelho,

David Bates, 258 Pettaconsett Ave., Warwick

Photography by Wolf Matthewson.

Halloween will never be canceled for David Bates. Every year, he spends countless hours building and creating a scene on his front lawn, which, in the past, included a walk-through maze in a creepy barnyard he built himself. For the last several years, the theme has been a haunted farm with an illuminated barn, windmill, a wagon, water tower and more, plus haystacks, hay bales, scarecrows and cornstalks.

“I have a little country in me,” Bates says. “I love the whole farm thing — pumpkins, scarecrows, cornstalks — it just screams Halloween.”

But this year, with COVID-19 changing up plans, he decided not to offer the walk-through section in his yard. “People have gotten to know us by the walk-through, so I know it’s going to be disappointing, but we wanted to come up with something that would make up for it, and would be just as good set up as a drive-by display.”

He got to work way back in March during quarantine, creating a scene he hasn’t seen in anyone’s yard. He kept the idea under wraps until he began setup in September, and he recently sold off the farm scene to a New York Stater who builds a massive Halloween attraction at his home.

Bates has already spent hundreds of hours and around $5,000 to create the setting for the 1978 classic horror movie, Halloween. “I am building Michael Myers’ house from the first scene of the movie,” says Bates. “I will have a bunch of mannequin characters in there as static props, including Michael Myers, Bob, Judith, Laurie, Loomis and young Michael. I am trying to keep it as original as possible.”

While he’s bummed he can’t invite people to wander around his yard in the dark, he hopes this drive-by attraction will make up for it. “The bottom line is Halloween is still going to come and people can celebrate, it’s just going to be different,” Bates says. “We are taking the original Halloween movie, which is probably the biggest Halloween movie ever released, and saying it doesn’t matter if COVID is here, you still can’t cancel Halloween.”

Keep tabs on the Bates Haunted Yard Display on Facebook.