Arts & Culture
Every Halloween, Wade Joffrion and his husband Greg Price bury politicians beside their home at 45 Upper Terrace in Corona Heights.
“It’s largely people you see on the news, and they just bother and annoy you,” said Joffrion, who orders his tombstones from a company in North Carolina. “Trump annoyed us from Day One.”
Past politicians to receive the honor of burial include Kellyanne Conway and Rudy Giuliani, with Steve Bannon and Ron DeSantis on tap for internment this year.
The tombstones are just one piece of the homeowners’ sprawling Halloween display, in what has become a tradition that the neighborhood eagerly awaits.
“The best payback is when you get people laughing and giggling outside,” Joffrion said.
Joffrion has been decorating the house for 23 years, and every year his display gets a bit bigger. And it’s not only Halloween—the couple decorates for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and even Fourth of July.
The pair has completed two extensive renovations on their home since they purchased it in 1997. Joffrion, a retired architect, was inspired to decorate from the very beginning.
“It looked like a haunted mansion when we bought it,” Joffrion said. “It needed a lot of work.”
Locals flock to the house on Halloween, with the couple distributing full-size candy bars from 11 in the morning to midnight. Eventually, the trick-or-treaters started coming into his living room for pizza. Joffrion dressed up like the Grim Reaper for a few years but stopped when he realized he wasn’t spooking people anymore.
Joffrion inherited his love of decorating from his father, an airline pilot in the San Fernando Valley who created inventive Christmas displays that included the Seven Dwarfs hand-painted in Santa’s sleigh. “Part of it’s in my DNA,” he explained.
His whimsical, storybook home—with an eye-like window peering at you from the roof—provides the perfect canvas for his creativity.
“The house calls to you,” Joffrion said. “It says, decorate me.”
Julie Zigoris can be reached at [email protected]
