ST. CHARLES, Mo. _ Someone dumped Halloween on the front yard.
From a distance, it looks like a flashy hot mess. But once you get closer to the gargantuan Halloween display that's taken over this modest St. Charles house, you start to appreciate its genius.
There's the skeleton gang playing poker around a wooden bar that was hand-cut and painted. The skeleton wedding party and its fiendish guests. The skeleton cowboy riding a skeletal horse. The caged ghoul lurching toward you through fog and sparkling lights. The werewolf wearing a blood-stained shirt and pants growling as you walk by.
Chris Donaubauer is the king of the Halloween acropolis he's created that blankets the yard, fills the driveway and garage and extends through the backyard and onto the roof. His wife, Sara, 34, is a cafeteria worker at St. Charles High School and appreciates his annual effort but stays away from the setup.
Chris, 38, works for himself, mowing yards, working on cars and doing odd jobs. But around town he's known as the guy who "goes bigger than Clark Griswold."
It's a reputation he takes seriously. He's a man who wears his holiday spirit on his yard. Whatever the Donaubauer display lacks in sophistication, it makes up for in enthusiasm.
Chris starts unpacking the boxes of decorations in September. It takes 8- to 12-hour days for the entire month to set up everything from 300 boxes of decorations stored in their basement, the attic and a shed. He likes to finish by the beginning of October to give visitors an entire month to appreciate his handiwork.
IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME
The ranch house at 620 Nancy Drive is a little less than 1,100 square feet on an unassuming street. Near the end of October, the glittering Halloween display attracts hundreds of visitors a night; they are welcome to walk around the yard. Some bring their out-of-town guests each year. Earlier this month, a journalist from Norway visited the house after catching word about it. On Halloween night, they give out at least a thousand pieces of candy to trick-or-treaters.
It started 15 years ago. Their oldest son, Brendon, was born on Dec. 13, and it was going to be his first Christmas. Chris put up the lights, added a few blow-up Santas and snowmen and made a wooden cutout of a gingerbread house and family for the lawn.
"I call it The Normal," he said.
Every year, it grew.
The Donaubauers live with their three kids and Chris' mother. She orders a couple thousand dollars' worth of new decorations each year. People drop off things he can add to the burgeoning display. He hates throwing anything out and will try to repair and repurpose things that eventually break down.
He estimates that just the Halloween display is worth around$50,000 to $100,000. (For some perspective, real estate website Trulia estimates the value of their house to be just under $150,000.)
The Donaubauers are part of the growing class of extreme holiday decorators, but the rest of America also has a surging Halloween appetite. Halloween spending is projected to reach a record $9.1 billion this year, according to the National Retail Federation. Consumers are expected to easily surpass the $8.4 billion spent in 2016.
Chris is well-known around the neighborhood, but people travel from hours away to see what he's added each year. The regulars are counting on him, and they follow his progress on a Facebook page.
"They expect me to do it," he said. And he takes pride in the chaotic, sprawling, eye-catching scenes he's built all around him.
People always want to how much the family's light bill is. The Donaubauers use the year-round budgeting option offered through the electric company, so they don't even know how much the displays add to the bill. They keep security cameras on 24/7, and when the display is lighted up at night, a family member is always outside to keep an eye on things.
When the weather forecast is bad, they spend 45 minutes to an hour covering the entire thing. The front lawn is hard to walk through, Sara said. You can't take two paces on the yard without stepping on something.
"There still some room," Chris says, with a laugh.
The only thing that bothers Sara about the time-consuming project is when people holler at them from the street late at night to turn the display on after they've turned it off.
"Show some respect," she wants to say to them. But those incidents are few and far between. Chris gets a kick watching other people's amazement at what he's created.
The Christmas display is even bigger than Halloween.
Last year, a mother brought her young blind son, probably around 5 years old, to visit the display. He perceived light for the first time because of the overwhelming amount of light, she told Chris.
"Oh gosh, you could honestly cry hearing that," he said. In December, there are 750,000 to a million lights crammed on the small plot. The displays run on their own circuit breaker box, and they also use electricity from the house.
"You could run two whole houses off of how much electric we got here," Chris said.
When people in wheelchairs visit, he helps them navigate the crowded driveway.
"There's lots to see up here," he says. He and his wife don't like it when people just drive by without stopping to take a look around.
He used to put out a box for kids to leave letters for Santa. People started dropping cash in it for tips, so he had to get rid of it. Visitors are always trying to tip him, but he always refuses to accept any money.
Two years ago, he stopped entering the town's best holiday lights and decoration contest. He had won every year for more than a decade.
"I quit entering to give someone else a chance." he said. But then other people started entering his house for him. They would leave notes in his mailbox telling him.
The city started giving him a special "Over the Top" award instead.
