THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 28, 1994 TAG: 9410270195
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAM STARR, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
It was a ghastly caper, a fiendish prank, performed by a thief who obviously has no respect for the dead.
Someone stole the Grim Reaper's head from Robert and Sharon Fortin's front yard in Brigadoon Monday night, in what appears to be one of the worst cases of ghoul-beheading the city has ever seen.
It's a mystery why the thief only took the plastic head off the black-caped, 15-foot figure, held up by a utility pole and strung together with wire. The white head, about 3 feet long, has sunken red eyes outlined in black and weighs around 8 pounds, Sharon Fortin said. A pumpkin is also missing from their Ashton Drive residence.
Fortin fears the worst.
``I don't know how they got up there that high. They were determined,'' she said. ``They could've destroyed the whole thing but they only wanted that head!
``They didn't just steal my ghoul, they stole the neighborhood kids' ghoul,'' she added. ``It's a kind of gruesome mascot for the neighborhood. We'd like it back.''
The Fortin family, which includes 9-year-old Kimberly and 7-year-old Christopher, takes Halloween decorating very seriously. By Oct. 1 the ranch house is strung with orange lights (white Christmas lights painted with nail polish). Floodlights highlight a cardboard witch on a broom on the roof and the plastic pumpkins around the front tree. Halloween figures are pasted on windows and a steaming witches brew of bats and eyeballs welcomes visitors to the front porch.
The integral part of the decorating, however, is The Grim Reaper. The menacing figure stands behind an ``R.I.P'' sign and two tombstones in a floodlit graveyard next to the driveway. The red eyes glow.
The neighbors love it, Fortin said, and passing motorists stop to gawk. This is the third year family members have turned their nice, suburban home into a Halloween house of horrors.
``Our electric bill goes up $30 a month for this,'' said Fortin. ``Just to put up the ghoul is an all-day project. But we've had so much fun with it. It's worth the effort when you see these kids stop and say `Look, Mom!' ''
But Halloween won't be the same for them without the special effect of the ghoul's head, she said. She ran out and spent $25 on another white plastic mask, painted the eyes black and filled it with foam. But the other one was built to withstand weather extremes. And the flashing red eyes were awesome, she said.
She just wants the safe return of her ghoul by Halloween, no questions asked.
``If they're done with it, bring it back,'' Fortin said. ``I hope they enjoy it as much as everyone else does. If the kids who took it want one, I'd be happy to show them how to make it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by L. TODD SPENCER
Sharon Fortin puts a substitute head on the 15-foot Grim Reaper that
dominates the front-yard ``graveyard'' of the family house in
Brigadoon. She seeks the safe return of the real head by Halloween,
no questions asked.
by CNB