Holiday house brings spooky thrills for Halloween season

Owner Roy Jensen has been decorating the Bay Ridge home for holidays since 1989

With the Halloween season quickly approaching, a spooky house in Bay Ridge continues to be a big hit.

Since the beginning of September, the home at 635 79th St., also known as the 79th Street Holiday House, has had Halloween decorations on display.

The home includes spooky characters such as Chucky, Gremlin, witches and skeletons and even Labubus dressed in Halloween clothes.

Lifelong Bay Ridge resident Roy Jensen has been decorating his home for holidays since 1989. It started on a smaller scale and has quickly grown into a huge attraction in the neighborhood.

“It took around two weeks to put it all up,” he said of the display. “We put up plants, pumpkins and everything is fresh, and decorations need to be found and put in place.”

The house’s growing popularity is in part due to people visiting the display and posting photos on social media.

“It’s been insane,” he said. “We have a lot of content creators, and people come from all over the city. They flock to this house, and when they post it, it gets lots of attention. It’s one of our biggest decoration displays. 

“We started our Instagram last October because some posted a video of the house, and it got around two million hits. So, I said to my daughter Christina, ‘Let’s do our own one.’”

Unlike some house owners who have companies put up the decorations, Jensen takes pride in doing everything himself. He gets help from his daughters, Christine and Juliana, who help him with social media and planning.

“I have the eye to put everything together,” he said. “It’s not just about the scary stuff I put up. It’s the pumpkins. It’s all the fine detail, the special lighting. Everything comes together as one like a Broadway show. You can’t just have one thing. Some people just decorate with a few things, but you really need all the elements to make it a showcase, and that’s what I try to do for every holiday. Halloween is special. It could be getting more popular than Christmas.”

The house has gotten so popular that people from as far as Massachusetts and Connecticut have driven to meet Jensen and see the lights.

“I see people come here from all ages,” Jensen said. “It’s not just kids. A 90-year-old came here to look, and it brings her so much joy to see it. That’s the whole key and they inspire me to do it.”

Although his favorite decoration is the werewolf, he states that the presentation makes it special.

“Really, it’s putting it all together and seeing the smoke from the machine and lights and noise,” he said. “Seeing the completed work is the whole joy of it. It’s not just one thing. It’s everything coming together.”

On Halloween day, his daughter and a friend will be dressed up in full gear to greet visitors. 

“They put a lot of work into these costumes and characters,” he said. “It takes months of planning and they’re excited to do it.”

The display will be up until Nov. 1. After, it will be transformed into a Christmas home. 

“It’s an enormous undertaking and just overwhelming to do it,” Jensen said. “It’s all for the community.”