Some homeowners go over the top with decorating their house on certain holidays. For the last 20 years, Louellen Berger has turned her home into a Halloween extravaganza that has attracted countless visitors who have snapped countless selfies at the corner of St. Charles Avenue and State Street in New Orleans. Every Halloween season, the front yard of Berger’s house (some would consider it a mansion) is filled with plastic skeletons in various shapes, sizes, and poses. Each of set of bones carries a theme or title which gets updated yearly. In recognition of the new king in the U.K., one skeleton donning some royal garb and a crown is the former “Prince of Wails”. Another skeleton sporting an all-white suit and gold chain channels “Saturday Night Femur”.
Berger began the skeletal tradition 20 years ago. Since then, the home she shares with her husband Darryl has been more commonly known as the Skeleton House. In that same time frame, Louellen Berger has been called the “Queen of Halloween.” As this queen celebrates 20 years with the Skeleton House, I headed to Uptown New Orleans to see a slice of the life inside the home and the spectacle Berger has created outside of it.
Listen to how the Skeleton House got its start above in the player.
