Good Good Good · 8 hours ago

Halloween Displays Across the Us Raise Money for St. Jude’s

What began as one man's skeleton army going "a little overboard" has grown into a nationwide movement that turns front-yard haunts into acts of quiet devotion. When Jeff Robertson's Halloween display made the news in 2020, his family's first instinct was to redirect the attention - "how can we use this for good?" - and the answer became Skeletons for St. Jude, now 625 households strong and closing in on $2 million raised for pediatric cancer research. Participants like Jeffery Broking, who sets up 40 animatronics at his grandmother's house while navigating his own illness, and Elizabeth Stripling, who simply realized she already had the skeletons, reveal how ordinary the entry point to generosity can be. Stripling perhaps names the deeper impulse most plainly: the children at St. Jude can't be out trick-or-treating, and this is "something that might bring them a little light too, to know that there are people out here thinking about them on Halloween night, wishing they could be celebrating with them." It turns out that the same instinct that makes people drape their lawns in cobwebs and plastic bones - the desire to delight strangers, to participate in something larger than themselves - is not so far from the instinct to help a sick child.