With Halloween quickly approaching, many houses are completely decked out in decorations ranging from cute to frightening. As pumpkins adorn porches and skeletons dangle from trees, the spirit of the holiday is apparent.

Part of the tradition of Halloween is to scare others, and although dressing in chilling costumes is reserved for the 31, it begins much earlier as spooky accessories lurk in yards and around corners. While this is a common occurrence and important aspect of the holiday for many, one central question arises each year: How scary is too scary?

“I would say I actually like a combination [of scary and fun] The spooky ones I think are really can be very fun as long as they don’t jump out at me. I don’t like … to be surprised,” said VPA Department Chair Martha Anne Kuntz. “We have a man who has one of those giant skeletons on our street, and he leaves it up year round, and then he decorates it for like, Mother’s Day with flowers in its hair or whatever, so I think those are really cool looking.”

Although yard decorations are put up in the month preceding Halloween, their main purpose is to startle trick-or-treaters, many of whom are young children. For this reason, some houses choose to only display fun objects.

“I love the giant skeletons, … there’s this house in my house that has this giant skeleton dinosaur,” said junior Maggie Blanchard. “So I feel like, [I don’t] like the cute ones, but I feel kind of like the funny, … kind of random ones, but like, really scary feels unnecessary.”

But the issue many find with this approach is that there should be a space to celebrate the spooky spirit of the holiday, embracing the blood and gore for a single month.

While this issue is more of a gray area, there are certainly enough decorations for anyone to accessorize in their own style.