Halloween-loving mum takes 25 days off work to mastermind haunted home featuring a zombie with her late mum’s false teeth

A Halloween-loving mum-of-two has turned her Australian home into an extravagant haunted house for three months of the year – complete with a paper mache zombie featuring her late mum’s false teeth.

From August to October, supermarket cashier Deslee Barker lets loose and decorates her house top-to-bottom with a web cave, skeletons, and bats for Halloween, and has done so for the last 20 years.

Before Deslee’s mum, Gloria, passed away in 2018,  she told Deslee she wanted her to have her teeth to use in her Halloween decorations.

On Halloween night, Deslee has around 1,000 people visiting her house, with cars queuing up for four kilometres down her road.

The 56-year-old dresses up for work in Halloween costumes with full face paint in the three days running up to the big day, and as a result is known as “the crazy Halloween lady” of her hometown, Pottsville in Australia.

The Halloween fanatic begins preparing her house for the big transformation on August 1 every year and says her husband of 25 years, Geoff,  50, and her two sons, Jack, 24, and Jessie, 21, are used to her decorations.

She explained: “I say to my husband, you get to go jet skiing for 12 months of the year, and my children get to play video games and have fun for 12 months. Why should I wait to celebrate Halloween? I really argue with it.”

Deslee makes her own props out of paper mache, saying, “I made a skeleton a few years ago that was probably seven and a half feet. It’s a lot cheaper that way and a lot more fun.”

However, her most unusual decoration is a paper mache zombie that has her late mum Gloria’s teeth.

Deslee said: “She told me just before we knew she was going to pass that she was going to give me her teeth because she knew I made all these weird things.

“She said, ‘Put them in a zombie’, so that’s what I did.”

Deslee explained that not all of her guests believe the teeth are real, saying: “Every year people comment on them, and I say, ‘They’re my mum’s teeth,’ and they laugh.”

The cashier also dresses up for work in the run-up to Halloween – recently transforming herself into the scary lead character from the comedy horror movie Beetlejuice, and a clown with a full face of terrifying make-up.

She explained: “It just makes everyone so happy. Everybody always says to me they love my passion, and how much they love it.”

Deslee is so passionate about her decorations she even got a haunted house tattoo on her arm in August 2022.

And she carries business cards around with her at work, ready for when she hears anyone mention Halloween. The cards include her address, name and the times trick-or-treaters are welcome.

Her love for Halloween and all things horror was born when she owned a fish and chicken shop, ‘Fish and Chicks’, at age 29 in Murwillumbah, Australia.

She decorated the shop’s windows for every occasion, mainly due to the free advertising, as she said it would often get put into the local paper.

She said: “I still have all my ‘Happy Halloween’ signs that we used 30 years ago and all the bats we cut out. I put them up every year at home, and it just snowballed after that.”

Deslee began decorating her home in the late 90s, saying: “I started doing it big at home for a day or two, and the trick-or-treaters would look around me when I opened the door.

“I would ask if they wanted to come in and have a look, and we had about 20 or 30.”

Now, on Halloween night, Deslee has around 1,000 people visiting her house, with cars queuing up for four kilometres down her road.

She has trick-or-treaters from 4pm to late and then has a huge party on the closest Saturday to Halloween with 40 of her closest friends and family until 5am.

She said: “My childhood best friend, who I’ve known since I was 15, always comes and we watch the sun come up, and we usually have a dance.”

Deslee has taken 25 days off work in a row this year to prepare her four-bedroom house for October 31, and will be putting a life-size version of Carrie, from the 1976 film, in her bathroom.

She said: “The first four days, we will be getting everything ready, like putting Carrie into the shower and emptying the bathroom so my boys can use my shower until Halloween.

“I made Carrie out of paper mache last year, and she’s awesome. I love her, and I’ve actually got a bucket of blood coming down from her head as well.”

She laughed: “I have to move my husband’s chair that he sits in every night because it’s just in the way of my decorations.

“Plus, I want to build a big body on that. I’ve got a severed head that screams, and I want to attach it to a body instead of hanging him from the roof.

“So, I’ll build his body in my web cave and then I’m going to put him into my husband’s chair.

She added: “It’s a visual feast. There’s stuff everywhere, and people don’t know where to look.”

However, Deslee said she “tries really hard not to think about” how much everything costs.

She said: “I know I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars just in the past few months, but it does cost me a lot.

She added:  “I reuse everything as long as it’s still intact. I’ve been using some things for over 10 years now.”

Then, on November 1, Deslee will take down nearly all the decorations – spending at least eight hours a day for a week on the mammoth task.

She said: “I get really annoyed when I have to take all this down, and I go back to my boring white house.

“So I get away with keeping some Halloween decorations tastefully in the lounge.”