A Pennsylvania homeowner is facing pressure to remove Halloween decorations showing bodies hanging from trees, with critics saying the display resembles imagery associated with lynching victims.
The decorations outside the unidentified Bristol Borough resident’s home include fake bodies wrapped in bags and suspended from a tree, NBC 10 Philadelphia reported.
“I’m just looking at it and I’m just thinking to him, like, ‘Do you not see what’s wrong with this?’” resident Roshea Newkirk said.
The Bucks County NAACP has urged the homeowner to remove the display, saying images of bodies hanging from trees “carry a painful historical significance” for Black Americans.
“This is not about restricting Halloween celebrations or freedom of expression. It is about historical awareness, empathy, and respect for our neighbors,” the civil rights organization said in a statement posted on Facebook.
The homeowner told the outlet that he never intended to offend anyone. He said the decorations were purchased online as part of a decorative kit.
Some residents, however, said they viewed the display as a typical Halloween scene.
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“At first I looked at it, and it’s a little bit different. Like, but then I’m looking, it’s Halloween,” local resident Mike Wade said.
“My house is scary. My house is always scary. It’s always set up scary. Same thing. Dead bodies laying around, skeletons. It’s Halloween,” he told the outlet.
Other residents said the decorations could evoke disturbing memories of the racist lynchings that terrorized and killed Black Americans throughout the 20th century.
The controversy eventually came before the Bristol Borough Council.
Officials said they contacted the homeowner and tried to persuade him to take down the display, but were “unsuccessful.”
“He feels they’re Halloween decorations and he won’t take them down. And we don’t have an ordinance against anything like that,” an official said.
The decorations remained on display as of Saturday, according to the outlet.
