Critics Haunt North Side Woman Who Has Cheeky Halloween Display
(CBS) – Don't expect smiley jack-o-lanterns at one house in Lincoln Square. The woman who lives there says Halloween should be a little creepy -- and a little controversial.
WBBM's Steve Miller reports.
The house on Giddings Street is well known to people in the neighborhood and notorious for its Halloween yard decorations from years past.
"I had a lot of parents actually cover their kids' eyes while they passed by," says the woman putting up those decorations, Teresa Bothur.
And she says that's not all.
"I had one woman who passed by me and said, 'Not appropriate.' I just let it go in one ear and out the other," she says.
Bothur's latest decorations have caused some talk on Everyblock under the heading "Unwelcome Intolerance." Critics, for example, says her depiction of a tombstone that says "Monsters really do live in closets" is really a "jab at homosexuals."
Bothur is baffled by that. "Homophobic? No, I didn't get that at all. You know how the kids are always saying, 'There's a monster in my closet.' It was more towards that."
She says she wanted to put up even scarier decorations, but her husband stopped her.
Also not popular with everyone is another of her tombstones. It says: "Here lies an atheist all dressed up and no place to go."
"If someone wants to ask me about it I'm more than happy to talk to them about it. But I'm not here to offend anybody," Bothur says.