Where To Find The Creepiest Halloween Decorations Around Boston

Halloween is one of the great surviving pagan traditions — dating back to an ancient Celtic festival of the dead. It marks the cusp of winter, a time when the nights grow longer and people have long suspected that the boundaries between living and dead and other, sinister creatures grow porous. Today we continue to celebrate the season with totems to spirits and demons, with inflatable grim reapers and plastic pumpkins lit with LED candles.

Below is a guide to local homes where people have gone all out in celebrating this most wonderful time of the year. They're listed by community, in alphabetical order, based on several nights haunting Greater Boston after the sun went down.

Are there great places that I’ve missed? Let me know in the comments or by email.

Boston: 15 Chelmsford St.
This front yard is packed with skulls, ghouls and tombstones.

Boston: 25 Harbor View St.
The skeletons and specters on this porch are all the more creepy for lurking in darkness.

Boston: 1090-1092 Hyde Park Ave.
This house is a Halloween icon on Hyde Park Avenue with its front yard lit up with spooky decorations.

Boston: 206 Savin Hill Ave.
An inflated dragon, haunted coach and grim reaper congregate in this yard.

Malden: 26-28 Bainbridge St.
Bainbridge Street has become a Halloween destination since Maryann Spinney (26 Bainbridge St.) and her daughter and son-in-law Evelyn and Mark Anzalone (50-52 Bainbridge St.) began going all out decorating their homes more than a decade ago. Other neighbors followed suit, including Michelle Corbett, who often turns her yard at 49 Bainbridge St. into a free, outdoor, walk-through haunted house on Halloween night.

Medford: 26 Hillsdale Ave.
A witch and ghouls (including a demon who happens to resemble Donald Trump) haunt the home of Rich Sullivan, who prides himself on making his astonishing displays from scratch.

Medford: Main Street at Bowen Avenue.
Skeletons and giant inflated spiders have taken over this yard.

Medford: 44-46 Medford St.
Ghosts, skulls and spider webs decorate this home.

Melrose: 223 Washington St.
Scott Moss creates one of the most truly frightening homes in the region each autumn. He turns his front drive into “Clara’s Tunnel of Terror,” named for his late mother, who he says inspired his passion for Halloween haunts. He covers the driveway and turns it into a maze running past animated tableaus of skeletons (pictured at top), evil clowns, and a murderous butcher with a still writhing corpse. He opens it to the public on both Halloween and Halloween eve (when he invites visitors as a charity fund-raiser). Moss dreams some day of opening his own haunted house.

Newburyport: 10 Tyng St.
Pirate skeletons overrun this home.

Somerville: 166 Central St.
A hand-crafted monster mouth greets visitors to the home of Lenny “Iggy” Rigione, who is also known for his fabulous, hand-made, mechanical Christmas displays.