The Ghoulish Details This home might drive you batty. STORY CHRIS CHRISTEN PHOTOGRAPHY JEFFREY BEBEE
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ot to creep you out, but we have an eye-popping scoop on an Omaha family who lives and breathes Halloween – 365 days of the year. “Nobody does Halloween crazy like us,” says Brigette Ryalls of her home's decor. “Everybody who knows us knows that we’re completely insane for Halloween.” The theme is so intense, “Some of my kids’ friends are freaked out when they visit – and no, it’s not Halloween season,” Brigette admits. “The werewolf in the lower-level family room particularly bothers the younger ones.” Brigette loves horror films and science
fiction novels, and is obsessed with vampires. But, she concedes, she probably wouldn’t be this entrenched in Halloween if it wasn’t for her relationship with Steven Buda. Born on Oct. 31, the Methodist Hospital surgeon has collected Halloween knickknacks all his life. “After medical school, with a real job and real money he went a little crazy” with his acquisitions, Brigette says. Decades later, he’s still scouring stores and the Internet for nifty gory things for their home. When the couple merged households a few years ago, they had intended to keep the décor of the main living area fairly “normal” during the off-season. But then they’d buy
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