Fright on Fairmont Street

The nicest compliment people could give Elle Becker this Saturday is to tell her that she’s one sick f***.

She’d like it if people raise their eyebrows and believe something is seriously wrong with her.
So she said on an October afternoon as she tinkered with a flashing red object in a jar labeled ‘heart of bat.’

Judging by her preparations two weeks before her Halloween party, Becker is well on her way to achieving the reaction she seeks.

Becker, 36, is hosting her third Halloween party in four years on Saturday night, and the cauldron of ideas in her head is bubbling over.

Her decoration collection alone would rival any Halloween superstore: stuffed snakes from a taxidermist, a blood-splattered chainsaw that plays loud whirring noises, and rubbery body parts with bones jutting out are just a few of the ghoulish items that bring a smile to Becker’s face.

And surely the decapitated heads in her foyer are deterring any would-be thieves in her Columbia Heights townhouse.

“I don’t have to go insane,” she said, “but if I do have life-size mummies in the living room, it’s fun.”

Mixing the Potion

Becker hasn’t always been so, well, gutsy.

She does have a soft spot for zombies and World of Warcraft, but otherwise she’s an ordinary federal government employee.

“It’s not like I’m a morbid person,” she said. “I’m not a Goth chick.”

Instead, Halloween is Becker’s opportunity to reinvent a childhood that didn’t offer her the chance to enjoy the holiday. One year, for example, Becker came to school without a costume only to have her teacher put a paper bag over her head.

She didn’t trick-or-treat much either, she said, attributing the lack of candy-filled sacks to many elderly people and few kids in the Florida neighborhood where she grew up.

“It always seemed like something I should enjoy more than I did,” she said.

So, starting in 2007, Becker has done just that, steadily multiplying her decorations and her creativity.

In 2008, her caterer bailed on her at the last minute, throwing Becker into panic mode to ensure a gory feast on short notice. On top of that, some of her decorations damaged her walls and necessitated costly repairs. Between the memory of those snafus and her work schedule, Becker took a break from Halloween in 2009.

But the spell had been cast: “The hiatus made me go further overboard,” she said.

The Dev’Elle is in the Details

Stephen Colbert may want to relocate his March to Keep Fear Alive because Becker’s $15,000 Halloween party budget (out of her own pocket) allowed her to leave no tombstone unturned.

Decorations cover the gamut: there’s a $5 severed hand, a $250 corpse and a wax bust named Deidre that cries wax tears but cost too much to mention, Becker said.

She has mapped out themes for different parts of her house. The foyer will house a Texas Chainsaw Massacre table, as well as scaffolding from which decapitated heads will hang under red light bulbs. The upstairs patio is H’Elle, to be lined with flame-pattern fleece, and the downstairs deck will bear 100 birds for a Hitchcock theme. Tombstones go out front and pumpkins – real and fake – out back. The witches’ den downstairs will feature tarot card readers alongside life-size witches. To flush the upstairs toilet, partygoers will have to reach into the coil of a real stuffed snake. (Becker wanted a live snake for a terrarium but realize snake rental would make for an odd Craigslist ad.) The downstairs bathroom won’t be any less creepy: the Psycho theme begins with a Bates Motel sign on the door and continues to the shower, where a life-size Norman Bates awaits.

Becker doesn’t actively encourage the 100 people she expects at the party to snoop in her medicine cabinet, but if and when they do, they’ll find tiny glass jars of immaculately labeled surprises. There’s dirt from Edgar Allan Poe’s grave, a rattlesnake tail, a dead moth and even the penis bone of a fox.

Becker has moved books off her shelves to make room for her wine selection, which includes selections such as Bone Dry Red and Ghostly White. Attendees will sip from custom-painted wine glasses.

“It’s kind of overwhelming,” Becker admitted, surrounded by boxes still to unpack two weeks before the party. “I’m only one person – there’s only so much I can do.”

Tricks and Treats

But Becker will enlist the help of a caterer; the food will complement the decorations and themes.

Some of the approximately 20 menu items include a beef tenderloin and leek dish designed to look like a severed arm (that, of course, goes in the Texas Chainsaw area), radishes peeled to resemble bloodshot eyeballs and a witches’ hair salad made with frisée.

“A lot of it I came up with on the fly, doing research and using my own imagination,” said Chris Mueller, the caterer who is preparing the freakish feast. He and Becker have been in touch since September to create the deliciously spooky menu.

One of Mueller’s favorite items is a dish he calls witches’ fingers. On top of finger-shaped sugar cookies and gummy worms in a pail, this sweet treat will feature Nutella mixed with N-Zorbit, a tapioca maltodextrin that will make the hazelnut spread powdery, like dirt.

“It’s great to have someone who allows me to go outside the box,” Mueller said of Becker, adding that it’s not everyday he’s encouraged to be grotesque with food.

A Fairfax County ecologist by day, Mueller works part-time for Susan Gage Caterers in Maryland and would eventually like to open his own restaurant.

“Cooking is my passion and my love,” he said.

Mueller will have a sous chef and two assistants with him on Saturday to ensure the food preparation and presentation goes smoothly. He need not worry about where to display the food; Becker has ample Halloween serving dishes to accentuate Mueller’s creations.

“I was pretty impressed,” he said. “That’s the most Halloween stuff I’ve seen in one place – ever.”

Where-wolf

Becker’s unique serving dishes and decorations clearly don’t come from a one-stop party store. She has spent months ordering specific items from various websites, including Etsy, which allows her to get personalized and hand-made items.

Intrigue has heightened among co-workers, since Becker received box after box of gruesome deliveries at work.

“I’m at the point where I empty my office every weekend, and every week it fills up again,” she said.

Becker rents a 10’ x 11’ storage unit in which her decorations mummify for the remainder of the year.

Now that friends and family know of Becker’s Halloween parties, she often receives decorations as gifts for birthdays and other occasions. She recently acquired gold skull place card holders, for instance.

“It seems inappropriate to open a corpse on Christmas,” she said, “but it works for me.”

Monstrous Moment

Although Becker’s mind drifts to Halloween throughout the year, she’s still unsure what costume she’ll go with on Saturday. A custom-made autumnal gown didn’t turn out as she’d envisioned it, and a corpse bride costume didn’t work out, either.

Whatever she ends up wearing, Becker has achieved her goal of creating her own experience for Halloween with flying colors – and perhaps colors won’t be the only things flying.

She believes her generation is more individualistic, and this is her time to wield her decapitated heads and shine.

“It’s about enjoyment,” she said. “It’s about the moment.”

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By the numbers
Though she doesn’t officially keep track of her inventory, Elle Becker has a very accurate spreadsheet in her mind. It includes:
11 decapitated heads
3 life-size witches
2 tarot card readers
100 Hitchcockian birds
20 tombstones
7 fog machines
1 cat mummy
44 bottles of wine
200 bottles of beer