All Dolled Up: Local family’s spooky decor is a seasonal landmark
Walk of the Town By Sarah Cook
“Babies on the fence will probably always be a thing.”
This is an opening quote that only a certain kind of interview would allow for, and only during the spookiest of all seasons.
I’m speaking with Mike and Jill Barham along with four of their six kids—Norah, Owyn, Gage, and Reed— the family responsible for the jaw-dropping Halloween spectacle that, since 2018, takes place each year at the corner of 10th and Mt. Hood streets in The Dalles.
They are a blended family united by their love of animals—they have a whopping 12 pets in total—and their dedication to Halloween and all things thin-veiled.
So you’re basically a family of weird artists? I ask about 20 minutes into our conversation, and the pleasing look that alights on their faces means they know it’s a compliment. To be clear: my understanding of weirdness is a deeply affectionate and creative one; this might be one of the coolest and most artistic families I’ve encountered in a long time, and I feel quite happy to be speaking with folks who I have secretly admired for the past five years.
The decorating—it really is a kind of world-building—that takes place at the Barham house is a distinctly non-commercial one, and I imagine this is one of the core reasons why folks like myself are so drawn to the results. While the occasional pre-made decorations are present, including one of those towering 12-foot skeletons, it’s the wildly unique features and handmade modifications that draw you in.
Most of which, of course, revolves around the baby dolls. Faces are embedded with plant matter, body parts are clumsily dyed or sewn together inorganically. There are staring eyes, hollow eyes, entirely removed eyes, grotesquely painted eyes, and eyes doused in unrestrained makeup. There is a doll that looks like it’s snacking on its own organs, and another one whose stomach is marked with thick black pen that reads: “Some people cry at weddings, some people die at weddings.”
At the Barham house, genuine imagination and playfulness (and, yes, the occasional cannibalistic toy) are given full permission to be. The kids are encouraged to come up with new and interesting ideas, even when challenging or bizarre, and are supported with finding creative methods for making them real. The result is both startling and enchanting, the kind of thing you think you ought to look away from but really don’t want to. It pushes me to the very edges of my grown-up imagination—edges that, of course, I benefit from bumping into.
Life is weird and fleeting!
Of all the things this time of year reminds me of, it is this necessary truth - that life is weird and fleeting - that remains front and center. The Barham house is emblematic of this humbling, liberating reminder.
Despite the shock and chaos of it all, there remains a demonstrable focus to the scene. As fun as it can be to scoop up one of every type of Halloween decoration and place them in crowded proximity, the dazzling quality of such scenes, in my experience of viewing them during my walks around town, is fairly short-lived. But the Barham house, no matter how many times I pass by, always gives me something more to look at, something I hadn’t quite registered during my last perusal. Has that skeleton always been reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales? Was that baby’s head always facing east? Is that a possessed cabbage patch doll?!
Giving their yard a primary focus—the dolls, obviously—is part of the secret to their decorating success. They also explain that it’s pivotal to choose: cute or creepy. “It’s hard to make scary things cute, but pretty easy to make cute things scary,” Mike said, surrounded by spooky proof.
“Previously cute?…”
In addition to the dolls, they remain flexible and spontaneous with the finer details and different sections of their yard, and they continue to expand. New this year are chalk outlines, which the kids insisted on modeling for me, and a gigantic spider perched on the northern end of their roof. Recently christened Shelob, she is made from a yoga ball, spray foam, and insulation.
An earlier draft of Shelob.
Reed and Norah walking me through the chalk outlining process.
I am particularly excited to ask about the history of this family endeavor. As it turns out, Grace and Ayla, Jill’s two oldest daughters, were once upon a time too frightened to even walk down the Halloween decoration aisle. So, Jill came up with an idea: what if they could demystify the scary decorations by making some themselves? A few Pinterest searches later and they were turning old Barbie dolls into zombies, and a familial love of haunted arts & crafts was born.
Reading back through my notes from this interview during the writing process was itself a delightful experience. “Clown,” “M. Myers,” “horse eating the baby bits;” it’s like the bizarre word cloud of my October dreams. The corner of one page reads, “it looks like it’s trying to stay,” and I find myself recalling Mike’s modification to their gigantic skeleton, which has what he refers to as a “breech baby” tucked into its pelvic bones. The absurdities are plentiful, unapologetic, and entertaining.
Breech Baby
Breech Baby at night
The family has refined their process as needed—hanging dolls by their necks is one of the few off-limits methods, something the kids had initially attempted for innocent, purely logistical reasons — but for the most part, anything goes. I’m relieved to hear that their reception over the years has only grown more and more positive. People send enthusiastic letters and postcards. (They’ve come a long way since that first year when, as Jill and Owyn recount, they received a letter from an irate citizen threatening to bulldoze their yard.)
People drop off their own baby doll donations. Mesmerized drivers heading south on Mt. Hood come to a complete stop, regardless of how many additional cars are behind them. Pedestrians halt in their tracks and, when the family is outside, shower them with praise and inquiry. As if on cue, a gentleman strolls by, and I get to watch the stages of his reaction: First, the double-take, followed by the attempt to keep moving forward even as his brain clearly registers increasing curiosity. Finally, the inevitable halting. “Wow, this is…amazing,” he said with genuine awe. Perhaps feeling inspired to relate, he describes a place he knows about in Mexico called “The Doll Island,” and explains that you have to be “very brave” to go there. He smiles, asks if he can take a few photos, and then continues on with his day.
Gage poses with his favorite Zombie doll.
It’s no surprise that the Barhams cite a diversity of creative outlets that keep them busy throughout the rest of the year, which includes not only other artistic pursuits—virtually every kid seems to be skilled at drawing—but things like gardening and baking, too. Gage loves sports and Owyn loves to sing; Reed’s drawings involve designing his own monsters, while Norah’s embodies her version of a Tim Burton-esque aesthetic. Though remarkable in their own unique ways, the kids I meet seem to embody a shared enthusiasm for all things fun and extravagant, and they play and make and laugh and run about like kids who are deeply present, yet always capable of peering in the direction of some other world.
Reed gives a monster hug to one of the older decorations.
When I ask about the hardest part of this annual endeavor, Jill notes the difficulties of taking everything down come November 1st, not to mention the amount of storage that their growing collection requires. But the process itself is quite organic, and things “come to fruition that day” without too much planning in advance. It reminds me of something comic book artist Lynda Barry speaks to: the need to forget about what you’re trying to make—to not get bogged down in the expectations—in order to see what you’re actually making. As if a huge part of the magic of creativity is simply making sure you aren’t in the way of your own magic.
The Barham family is, I am certain, really good at getting out of their own way. The only thing I'm unsure of is whether they realize just how inspiring they are; it’s impossible not to wonder what it feels like to be young and curious and weird while a parent stands behind you saying,
Yes, what else? Keep going.
“I wanna make it the most fun as possible because the rest of life is kinda hard,” Mike said of his holiday intentions. But it’s clear, after hearing him and Jill mention some of their other yearly activities—things like extravagant birthday celebrations and town-wide scavenger hunts—that making anything the most fun as possible is never off the table, no matter the time of year.
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Readers, if you haven’t already, make sure you spend some time admiring the creative handiwork at the corner of 10th and Mt. Hood. And for some extra fun, you can say hello to the Barham family at their fortune-telling booth at this year’s “Monsters in the Park” event, which happens the night of Halloween itself, Monday, Oct. 31st, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at City Park on Union Street
