Black Bucks County residents demand homeowner take down creepy Halloween display showing bodies hanging from trees

A Pennsylvania homeowner put up Halloween decorations that some people in the community found offensive and demanded that he take them down. The home is in Bucks County, in the eastern part of the state.

The home in Bristol Borough is decked out for the spooky holiday with "bodies" wrapped in back garbage bags and duct tape hung from trees by nooses. Black residents said the display is a call back to lynchings.

A local news report interviewed a woman who said that upon seeing the display, her "mind went back to what my ancestors went through, being hung from trees with nooses around their neck." She went to the Bristol Borough Council meeting to try to get officials to take action. 

Another woman said that the display was "connected to a painful history" and that this should be enough "to help the homeowner make a voluntary action to change it." 

The Bristol Borough Council went out to the home and spoke with the homeowners there, suggesting that they remove their decorations. "Just do you know, our borough inspector did stop there and talk to him, but we were unsuccessful," said an official to concerned residents.

"He feels they're Halloween decorations and he won't take them down. And we don't have an ordinance against anything like that," he went on. The resident told the official who went out to encourage removal that he bought a Halloween decorations kit and these were items that were in that kit. He wasn't trying to offend. 

Now the local NAACP is getting involved over what is being called a racist display. The NAACP of Bucks County put out a statement on Facebook, saying "SOMETHING CAN BE LEGALLY PERMISSIBLE AND STILL BE PROFOUNDLY HARMFUL. The NAACP Bucks County Branch is deeply concerned by a Halloween display in Bristol Borough, Pennsylvania, depicting simulated bodies hanging from a tree." 



"For Black Americans, this imagery carries a painful historical significance rooted in lynching and racial terror. While we recognize that Halloween decorations are often intended to frighten or shock, intent does not erase impact," the statement continued.

"On October 7, our branch received a complaint from a concerned resident seeking assistance. We have since followed up and are calling for continued engagement by borough leadership and voluntary reconsideration of the display. This is not about restricting Halloween celebrations or freedom of expression. It is about historical awareness, empathy, and respect for our neighbors.

"We cannot change our history, but we can choose how we respond when that history is invoked in our communities today."