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A Pennsylvania homeowner is facing calls to remove his creepy Halloween decorations depicting bodies hanging from trees — with critics comparing the display to lynching victims.
The controversial decorations outside the unidentified Bristol Borough resident’s home feature phony bodies wrapped in bags hanging from a tree, NBC 10 Philadelphia reported.
“I’m just looking at it, and I’m just thinking to him, like, ‘Do you not see what’s wrong with this?’” resident Roshea Newkirk said.
The Bucks County NAACP has called on the homeowner to take down the decorations, saying the imagery of bodies hanging from trees “carries a painful historical significance” for black Americans.
“This is not about restricting Halloween celebrations or freedom of expression. It is about historical awareness, empathy, and respect for our neighbors,” the civil rights chapter said in a statement posted to Facebook.
The unnamed homeowner told the outlet that he didn’t mean for the decorations, purchased as a decorative kit online, to offend anyone.
And some residents told the outlet that the decorations are simply just another run-of-the-mill Halloween display.
“At first I looked at it, and it’s a little bit different. Like, but then I’m looking, it’s Halloween,” local Mike Wade said.
“My house is scary. My house is always scary. It’s always set up scary. Same thing. Dead bodies laying around, skeletons. It’s Halloween,” he told the outlet.
But other locals believe the decorations can evoke disturbing reminders of the racist lynchings that terrorized and killed black Americans throughout the 20th century.
Debate over the decorations even reached a borough council meeting.
Officials said that they’d reached out to the homeowner to convince him to remove the decorations, but were “unsuccessful.”
“He feels they’re Halloween decorations and he won’t take them down. And we don’t have an ordinance against anything like that,” the official said.
The display was still up as of Saturday, according to the outlet.
