A spooky display, no matter the holiday

If you’ve traveled along Walnut Road, right between Taco Bell and Glen Cove Hospital, you’ve likely met Moishe, or Skelly, a12-foot-tall plastic skeleton. He stands proud, dressed up for every holiday and special occasion as a fun surprise for his neighbors. He’s a bone-a-fide star. 

Maybe you remember him as Cupid for Valentine’s Day, maybe you saw him as Moses parting the Red Sea, or maybe you’ve had the chance to see him dressed as Uncle Sam for the Fourth of July. The massive Halloween yard decoration first hit the market in 2020, and now stands in the front yard of Danielle Reiss and Adam Sontag’s house, greeting onlookers as they pass by on foot, or in their cars. 

“One of the kids I babysit has a fit every-time I drive over there because it scares him,” Facebook user Jen LaRocca, said. “Thanks Skelly.”

Although Skelly might startle a few passersby’s, most of the feedback they’ve gotten has been good. He’s put smiles on a lot of our faces. No one has a bone to pick with him.

“I like seeing how they dress him each month,” Leslie Brussel said on Facebook. “They’re very clever when they do it.”

Skelly’s audience is primarily children, and he’s proved to be quite the landmark for those getting to know the area. 

“My youngest always needs to point out the big skeleton every time we pass by,” Erin Elizabeth said. “He’s three and is highly aware of where we are strictly by the whereabouts of that big skeleton.”

Finding clothes for big boned wonder can be difficult. Reiss and Sontag typically find clothes for Skelly, who wears a size 5X, online, or they’ll craft outfits for him by hand.

“Sometimes I’ll see anything that’s comically large, like that large flower that he had in his hand for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day,” Reiss said. “I got that from the CVS because they just happen to be selling large flowers. A lot of things come from Amazon because you can just type whatever you want. really specific, and they’ll have it.”

The New Jersey transplants bought the house in 2021, and heard about the home’s past as a depilated structure, and then a day care center.  Although a skeleton is known as a symbol of death, the big-boned structure has breathed a new sense of life into the home.

Before Skelly, the couple had a lot of people who would pull over in front of the house, thinking it’s a shoulder because of the curvature of the road. People don’t pull over as much because they now understand that it’s a residence. 

“What’s really funny is once in a while, the police will pull someone over,” Sontag said.  “And then those people have to suffer the shame of having a 10 to 15 minute long traffic stop in front of a gigantic skeleton, like Moses, which is pretty funny.”

The couple decided to keep Skelly up year-round to get the most out of the hundreds they spent on him, but they’ve also formed new friendships along the way.  Reiss recalled a surprise visitor, who delivered a card to say how much Skelly meant as a favorite fixture in the neighborhood.

“I was like, a new friend just literally knock on my door,” Reiss said. “We sat down and we talked for a bit. They had just basically written us this card to say, ‘thank you for having this cool skeleton.’  Now we’re friends.”