Steven Novak, the Dallas artist whose previous Halloween displays in East Dallas garnered international attention and multiple police visits, brought his macabre artistry to his new Oak Cliff residence in 2024. The latest installation continued his tradition of creating disturbingly realistic scenes that both intrigued and unsettled onlookers.
Before his 2024 effort, he checked in with his new neighbors first. “I moved, and I really didn’t want to piss off all the neighbors — I’m not an actual asshole, but I played one on TV for a while,” Novak joked to the Dallas Observer.
Some details of the 2024 display:
- It centered around a ‘Beetlejuice’ theme
- At night, green lasers shot out across his property and there was also a layer of fog across the grass
- Novak created decapitated torsos from foam insulation, plastic skeletons, and manniquins with theatrical blood and food coloring mixed with recycled water
Original story below:
By Mike Stunson The Charlotte Observer
DALLAS — A ghastly Halloween display in Dallas full of fake blood and murder scenes is leaving nothing to the imagination.
And despite cops having been called to the home in past years, Steven Novak keeps adding to the elaborate bloodbath. New to the gruesome gallery this year are a wood chipper blood fountain and 55-gallon drums overflowing with shredded party guests, he told the Dallas Observer.
“All the cops that came out last year were an absolute gas,” Novak said, according to the Observer. “I welcome them to come out and take more selfies.”
The display has wowed the internet, where his Instagram photos and TikTok videos are pulling in a bevy of reactions. Not bad for a man who doesn’t even love Halloween, KTVT reported last year.
[RELATED: Policing on Halloween: Replica weapons, crowd control and child safety]
What he does love, according to KTVT, is gore. And there’s plenty of it all along the exterior of his Texas home.
Fake body parts are strewn across the yard — some piled in a wheelbarrow — with one body even dangling off a roof. More bodies are a bloody mess on the walkway to the front door.
The fountain shoots off 3,000 gallons of fake blood per hour into a kiddie pool across the walkway. His TikTok videos show that the fountain is setup through a water pump system.
If you take a look in the front window, you’ll see a projector image of party guests desperately attempting to escapethe fake murder scene. “I mean, anybody that doesn’t look at this and crack up, there’s something wrong with them,” Novak told KTVT last year. As he built his display, Novak chronicled on social media how he made various scenes — including the broken door illusion and wood chipper. Novak welcomes onlookers to his yard, located on M Street in East Dallas.
©2021 The Charlotte Observer. Visit charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
This article, originally published on October 20, 2021, has been updated with new information and social video of the latest display.
