Das soon as you arrive in the garden, near the Gond-Pontouvre cemetery, the tone is set: you have to be careful not to step on the skeleton half buried in the flowerbed and have your heart set in front of a body wrapped in garbage bags, lying on a bench. No crime scene in this house on the Route de Vars, but an immoderate taste for Halloween decorations from its two owners, Fanny Poli and Régis Boutin.
It doesn't stop there. In the dark garage transformed into a gore salon, skulls, cobwebs, bewitched bats and a hideous rocking doll give the room a chilling atmosphere. “We’ve been doing this for 10 years. We have accumulated decorations over the years and found objects in flea markets,” concedes Fanny Poli, who takes on the role of artistic director for the occasion. Thursday evening the couple, who also admit to doing this to party, invited their friends and their two daughters for one hell of an evening.
A grave for his booklet A
In the heart of Angoulême, another pumpkin hungry person has been preparing… since August: Baptiste, 37 years old and a civil servant, does not count his hours to make the Halloween evening memorable for his guests. “This year, there will be around forty,” he said, before reassuring: “but the neighbors have been warned, there are even some who came to see what the decorations looked like.”
“Preparing for the evening with friends brings a little happiness.”
The visit, in fact, is worth a look: ouija board to summon the missing, baby dolls locked in cages, gigantic spiders and frightening skulls proudly sit in the cellar.
But the latter didn't have enough of his “manor”, so he took over his garden, in which we find a huge coffin, “a vestige of last year's party”, says our host, decidedly more even more worrying. Behind him, a cemetery enriched with a few tombs further darkens the decor.
Full of humor, Baptiste pushes a hanged man who is blocking the way and takes him to see his favorite, “the one where my Livret A lies”. For him, Halloween has become a tradition, of which he hopes to never get tired: “It's not necessarily a fun time for everyone, but making costumes and preparing for the evening with friends always brings a little happiness.”