East Sacramento family’s lawn display entertains neighbors, shares tolerance message

A group of plastic skeletons are competing in a sack race outside the Abernathy family’s East Sacramento home this week. One has a baseball cap on and another wears a Hawaiian shirt as the four skeletons stand in burlap bags facing a blue-ribbon finish line. A sign near the display reads, “Haunters Against Hate.”

“We’ve had a skeleton haunting our yard since 2016,” said Tracey Abernathy. “We purchased a pirate skeleton from Costco for Halloween that year, and when it came time to put him away, my son and his cousins begged [to keep it]. We got him a pilgrim outfit for Thanksgiving and a little Santa hat and a beard for Christmas, and then it just kind of kept going.”

Over the past four years, the Abernathys have added more skeletons, whose costumes change every two to three weeks. They recently had the skeletons pose for graduation, play volleyball and throw a frisbee. Tracey Abernathy’s husband, John Abernathy, used fishing line to hang the frisbee so it would look like it was flying through the air. Neighbors often stop to compliment or ask about their display, Abernathy said.

The new “Haunters Against Hate” sign relates to the name and message of a Midwest-based organization that speaks against hate in many forms and donates to LGBTQ+ organizations across the United States.

Abernathy said her family is not affiliated with the group, but she found the text of their lawn sign on the Haunters Against Hate Instagram page and liked the message. The sign states opposition to homophobia, racism, xenophobia, bullying, bigotry, sexism, anti-Semitism and injustice.

“I think everybody needs a little laughter in their life, and I wanted to kind of keep it fun and funny, however, there’s so much going on that I felt like we needed to make some small statement,” Abernathy said. “Definitely, we don’t want any hate in our neighborhood. Hate is the scariest thing out there.”

Haunters Against Hate originated after members of a group that reviews haunted attractions in Ohio posted hate speech targeting LGBTQ+ people on social media shortly after the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016.

The comment prompted a number of “haunters” — those who work with haunted house attractions as actors or other employees — to band together in solidarity, Haunters Against Hate founder Paul Lanner told The Sacramento Bee.

In the Abernathy family lawn, skeletons will continue to don timely outfits moving forward.

“I think we’re going to wrap up summer with a tug of war,” Abernathy said. “And then for Halloween our front yard transforms and you can actually do a little walkthrough haunt.”

This story was originally published August 10, 2020 at 10:58 AM.