Around Town

Photos: Neighborhoods across Arlington go all out for Halloween this year

By James Jarvis
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(Updated 6:15 p.m.) The residents of N. Jackson Street in Ashton Heights have gone all out again this Halloween but they’re not the only ones.

ARLnow also toured other parts of Arlington to size up the competition, and the surrounding neighborhoods did not disappoint.

With the help of social media and some good old-fashioned investigative reporting, we uncovered hidden gems across the county, from Rock Spring to Fairlington and from Lyon Village to Barcroft.

Over in Rock Spring, a home on N. Harrison Street has laid to rest the various “eras” of Taylor Swift’s musical career with a graveyard full of witty references to her song lyrics and albums.

In Barcroft, a home on 4th Street S. turned its lawn into a Girl Scouts-gone-wild nightmare. One scout practices her axe-throwing skills on a comrade, while various monsters enjoy a smorgasbord that goes well beyond cookies.

If you subscribe to the “go big or go home” philosophy, there are two houses in South Arlington you’ll want to see this weekend. One, along Army Navy Drive in Aurora Highlands, showcases larger-than-life skeletons and other jumbo-sized spooky figurines.

Not far away in Fairlington, another home on S. Stafford Street boasts a truly mammoth haunted house display that fills the entire front yard.

For those who prefer their scares more historical, a home on S. Garfield Street just south of Arlington Blvd might be more your speed. Passersby who look closely will see tombstones referencing famous historical events and figures, including victims of the Salem Witch Trials and Edgar Allan Poe.

Homeowners Ken Nagle and Kara Laake said their favorite part of the display are the tombstones that refer to the Great New England Vampire Panic of the 17th and 18th centuries.

“We found out about it a number of years back when we were up in New England. Basically… what would happen is one family member would get tuberculosis and die. Then the rest of the family would get it, and people thought that the dead family member was coming back as a vampire and feeding off of them,” Nagle said.

One tombstone even features the name Mercy Brown, one of the best-documented cases of a body being exhumed over suspicions of vampirism.

“They dug her up, pulled out her heart, burned it, made a drink from it, and had her brother drink it,” Nagle added. “And this wasn’t some medieval Europe event; it happened in the [1890s] in Rhode Island.”