GALION –JoAnn Cobern isn’t spooked by Halloween. It’s her favorite holiday of the year.

Her home on Chiswick Place is decked out in Halloween décor inside and out. Pumpkins, cornstalks, ghosts, and goblins. Strands of orange LED lights wrapped around the porch posts and, for the first time this year, a set of inflatable figurines in the front yard.

It’s a 40-year tradition.

“I love the colors, and it’s definitely my favorite season, autumn,” said the Galion native, who started putting up the massive display in mid-September. “I just like to do it, but my daughter thinks I’m nuts.”

Friends and family are well aware of her fascination with fall, so they buy her plenty of collectibles and outdoor decorations for gifts throughout the year. Cobern said she’s picked up other items at box stores, garage sales, and area craft shows or orders them online.

This year she even gussied up half of the two-car garage, converting it into a festive fall retreat complete with tables and chairs and an array of silk flowers, scented candles, wooden bats, and witches. It’s the ideal spot, she said, to plop down with her morning cup of coffee.

Cobern, 80, began her “spooktacular” extravaganza when she and her late husband, Dean, lived outside of town on County Line Road. Always plenty of lights back then for Halloween and Christmas – he was the city’s electric line department superintendent, and she worked in the office there.

They designed and built their own graveyard one year to fill up the front yard. Tombstones that he cut out of wood and she hand-lettered with black paint. And they created friendly Casper-like ghosts to swing from the trees and pop up from the ground.

The seasonal collection followed the family during two more moves, but it had to be downsized five years ago when they bought the current ranch on the city’s westside. Even so, Cobern said, most of the holiday décor has to be stored in multiple sheds in the back yard.

The sometimes-frightening display is arranged differently each year, Cobern said, some pieces secured to the ground with metal stakes or fastened to the lamppost and trees with, of course, black electrical tape because she’s “freaky” about fall, especially Halloween.

“I love it. I just like the colors. It livens up the place. And it’s certainly faster taking it down than putting it up.”