The newest traffic cop stationed near Dean Morgan Middle School is about 12 feet tall, never sleeps and has been dead for years.
His name is Tomb Petty, and he would really like Casper drivers to stop at the stop sign.
The giant skeleton towers over the corner of South Ash and West 15th streets, where Bronson Mitchell and his fiancée, Sara Herman, have been cycling messages through his bony hands since September. The first read: “It's the left pedal you want.”
With help from their six children, they've since moved toward what Bronson calls “cringy teenage, Gen Z slang.”
“Bruh. Stop sign," read the next.
More recently, Tomb Petty has invoked Jim Carrey: “STOP BREAKING THE LAW A55 HOLE.”
Please Stop
The couple bought their house in August, landing their blended family of six kids in a seven-bedroom 1962 home in Casper's aptly nicknamed Big Tree neighborhood.
Bronson and Sara met as kids at Dean Morgan Middle School, just down the street, then went separate ways before reconnecting as adults and eventually returning to the neighborhood, where they found the perfect house.
Well, almost perfect.
“The only thing that we hate is that nobody seems to want to stop at that stop sign,” Bronson said.
Bronson hasn't seen a crash in the little more than a month they've lived there, but their bedroom faces that side of the house and he can hear them.
"People slamming on their brakes or going right through it" he says.
The skelly cop might have a case.
City transportation planners have spent years studying the streets around Dean Morgan Middle School, with pedestrian and traffic safety among the concerns.
More than 600 students are enrolled there, and Casper's Safe Routes to School program, a joint effort involving the Casper Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and Natrona County School District, has documented studies of the area as planners look for ways to make walking and biking to school safer.
As for what Tomb Petty has witnessed in his deadtime, 15th Street has had plenty of time to accumulate stories.
Casper residents were traveling it more than a century ago. A 1955 Wyoming Supreme Court decision says the Casper City Council was making improvements to West 15th Street as far as South Ash by 1923, while testimony in the case described 15th as a well-traveled road or trail even in the early 1920s.
A century later, the traffic is still coming.
Old Stomping Ground
Bronson grew up in the neighborhood and remembers Dean Morgan as the place where he and other middle school kids “ran around ... and terrorized people.”
Now, decades after meeting there, he and Sara are raising their own kids, ages 4 to 16, within sight of the school.
Come October, leaves tumble onto sidewalks and collect along curbs. Porch lights flick on beneath them. On Halloween night, ghosts, goblins, witches and superheroes pour into the neighborhood and race from house to house.
Sara said Casper's older central neighborhoods and parts of the east side are the places families seek out on Halloween because residents “really show up,” particularly around the Wolcott and Durbin streets area.
She loves the nostalgia of the area, especially around the holidays.
At their previous house, Bronson said, they decorated but might see only six trick-or-treaters all night.
This year, they're expecting a whole lot more. And if they overbuy? "That's OK. I like candy," says Bronson.
Just a few streets away, the Halloween crowds get so thick that parts of Wolcott Street are closed to vehicle traffic as thousands of trick-or-treaters make there way through the neighborhood.
“That's the kind of Halloween we want,” Bronson said.
September
Bronson bought the giant skeleton at the beginning of September. He didn't have the patience to wait until October.
Sara protested that it was too early.
“We have to,” Bronson said. “I want to see what he looks like.”
Since Tomb Petty arrived, the Hermans have continued piling Halloween decorations into the yard and hope to build a graveyard around him.
The kids' enthusiasm varies.
Their 16-year-old thinks his parents are “completely nerdy,” Bronson said. The 13-year-old is “all in.”
Sara said the two share a love for “witchy stuff,” including “Hocus Pocus,” “Practical Magic” and just about everything spooky that comes with October.
The family's 4-year-old is excited, too.
“He loves dressing up,” Bronson said. “He's the kid that dresses in costumes to go to Walmart.”
Halloween Gets Bigger
The family's giant skeleton is part of a national Halloween arms race increasingly taking over American front yards.
The National Retail Federation expects Halloween spending to hit a record $13.5 billion this year, including $4.3 billion on decorations — and few decorations symbolize the bigger-is-better trend quite like Tomb Petty.
Home Depot's 12-foot skeleton became a viral hit after its 2020 debut, selling out before October that first year. The decoration quickly amassed millions of views under the #12ftskeleton hashtag.
This year, retailers are offering a skelly that can move its head and mouth and speak through Bluetooth. It shares the lineup with an 11-foot mummy and an 8-foot carnivorous-looking plant monster.
Bronson noticed.
“I was like, ‘That's what I want. I want one of those,’” he said.
He resisted the urge to buy the 25-foot decorations this year.
‘That Throwback Feeling’
Americans might be spending billions to make Halloween bigger. For Bronson and Sara, though, going big isn't about competing with the neighbors.
It's about trying to re-create something.
“For me, it's like it's a throwback feeling,” Bronson said. “It's like that nostalgia of, like, you know, the '90s kids that we just ran around and did crazy stuff.”
Halloween, he said, still gives kids permission to carom the neighborhood in packs, dressed in costumes and making memories.
“Nobody's on their phones or zipping around on scooters and whatnot,” he said. “It's just good family, you know, nostalgia feelings.”
Sara agrees.
“It's just that nostalgic feeling of being back when technology didn't take over,” she said.
They intend to be home Oct. 31, handing out candy and welcoming the masses.
Tomb Petty, meanwhile, will be outside keeping an eye on traffic.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
