BILLINGS — Forget a few pumpkins on the porch. For some Billings homeowners, Halloween decorating means towering skeletons, elaborate haunted walkways and thousands of dollars spent turning their yards into neighborhood attractions.
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At 4530 Electric Ave., Chris Wilson and his mother, Pat, have transformed their property into a Halloween destination with about 180 decorations, including 50 to 55 large animatronics.
"Right behind ZooMontana, this is Wilson's Haunted Manor,” said Chris Wilson.
What started as a way to attract trick-or-treaters to their home outside of town has grown into a full-scale display that takes about a month to six weeks to set up.
"We didn't really want it to look like we just puked Halloween on somebody's lawn," Wilson said. "We wanted to do different scenes so there's different areas to look at."
"It just got bigger and bigger, and we're already talking about using the field over here next year," added Pat Wilson.
The effort has paid off. The home won first place in the Billings Halloween Decorating Contest last year, and Pat Wilson said traffic to the display has tripled this year.
But creating the experience comes with a "spooky" price.
Chris Wilson estimates the family has spent between $8,000 and $15,000 on decorations over the years. Some items are purchased on clearance, while others sell out quickly and require paying full price.
“We try not to look at our receipts when we get done,” joked Chris Wilson.
On the other side of town, Art Barraza and his family have built another Halloween attraction on Caroline Street in the Heights.
Their display takes over much of the front yard, with a haunted walkthrough and a haunted house inside the garage. The street has become a Halloween destination, with several decorated homes and a sign welcoming visitors to "Scaroline."
Barraza said the display started about 10 years ago with a few homemade decorations. It has gradually grown into an annual family project featuring monsters, scares, and full-size candy bars.
“It's kind of nice. It's grown over the last few years, so it didn't start out this grand," he said.
He estimates the family has spent between $10,000 and $15,000 on decorations over the years. That doesn't include the candy. The family hands out about 700 to 800 full-size candy bars each Halloween.
"That's like $1,000 in candy," said Barraza.
Barraza said Halloween became the family's decorating holiday partly because of Montana's winters. After trying to decorate for Christmas, he and his wife decided the cold weather made putting up and taking down decorations difficult.
Halloween also offers something different, he said: an experience visitors can interact with rather than simply drive by.
"They walk through, they get some scares, the parents get scares, they get candy," Barraza said. "We have people come, like they'll go through five, like seven, eight times, because they're just enjoying it."
The growing displays in Billings reflect a larger national trend.
The National Retail Federation projects Americans will spend $13.5 billion on Halloween in 2026. Of that, $4.3 billion is expected to go toward decorations, nearly matching the $4.4 billion projected for costumes and exceeding the $4.1 billion expected for candy.
The federation's 2026 Halloween Consumer Survey also found that 42% of Americans planned to decorate their homes or yards. Overall Halloween participation is projected to reach 74%, up from 68% in 2019.
For Wilson, the growing investment in Halloween displays shows just how much the holiday has changed.
"It's starting to really take over," he said. "I feel it's become just as big of a display holiday as Christmas."
Still, for both families, the spending and weeks of setup come down to more than decorations. Wilson said one of his favorite parts is watching children explore the displays, point out their favorite decorations, and pull their parents over to see something new.
"There was a lady that commented and said that her kids have dragged her out five times already this year," said Chris Wilson. "That makes me happy."
Barraza said his children take pride in helping create an experience for other families, making the display a way to give back to the community. With both families already thinking about what they can add next year, Halloween in Billings may only get bigger.
"It's just like a fun, prideful thing to get back a little bit in a weird way to the community," Barraza said.
