Category: Humor

There are plenty of exciting things that you can finally do once you become a homeowner. You can choose whatever countertops you like for the kitchen, put a pool in the backyard if you so choose and go all out when decorating for the holidays. 

While most homeowners tend to stick to Christmas lights, the occasional Easter egg or their nation’s flag, some prefer to go all out for spooky season. Zombies in the yard, spider webs hanging from the trees and jack-o’-lanterns adorning the front door can make a house more inviting for trick-or-treaters. As long as their neighbors are fine with the decor, that is… One woman reached out to Reddit detailing how her neighbor threw a fit over her and her husband’s Halloween decorations. So below, you’ll find the full story, as well as some of the replies invested readers shared.     

This woman was thrilled to go all out when decorating for Halloween

Halloween decor with pumpkins, ghost figures, spider webs, and candles decorating a house porch in festive style.

Image credits: rawpixel.com (not the actual image)

But a neighbor decided that her decor was way too scary to be on display

Couple with Halloween decorations faces neighbor threat to take it down after going all out for the holiday celebration.

Halloween yard decorations with tombstones, skeletons, fake webbing, and large spider hanging from tree limbs.

Neighbor threatens couple to take down their Halloween decor after going all out with spooky decorations.

Text excerpt from a neighbor discussing the threat over Halloween decor in a residential neighborhood.

Angry neighbor threatening couple over Halloween decor, raising fist with a frustrated expression near a brick wall.

Image credits: koldunova_anna (not the actual image)

Text from a neighbor threatening a couple to take down their Halloween decorations due to arachnophobia and distress caused.

Couple faces neighbor threat after going all out with Halloween decor featuring purple fuzzy spiders with big googly eyes.

Neighbor threatens couple who went all out with their Halloween decor, demanding they take it down or face consequences.

Couple’s Halloween decor sparks neighbor threat, causing tension over elaborate yard decorations during Halloween season.

Woman decorating house with Halloween decor including spider webs and jack-o-lanterns, facing neighbor threats over Halloween decorations

Image credits: freepik (not the actual image)

Neighbor threatens couple to take down their Halloween decor or face consequences, sparking a tense dispute.

Couple refuses to take down Halloween decor despite neighbor’s threat, highlighting the holiday decoration dispute in their yard.

Update text about installing a ring doorbell and documenting neighbor threats over Halloween decor dispute.

Image credits: PlsHelpmeThrowRA

Later, the author responded to several readers and provided more information about the situation

Online discussion about a neighbor threatening a couple over their elaborate Halloween decorations.

Neighbor threatens couple who went all out with Halloween decor after dispute over spooky decorations.

Neighbor threatens couple over Halloween decor in a dispute about decorations and neighborhood rules enforcement.

Comment thread discussing a neighbor threatening a couple over their Halloween decorations and phobia concerns.

Screenshot of online comments about neighbor threatening couple over Halloween decorations featuring spider phobia and decoration disputes.

Neighbor threatens couple over elaborate Halloween decor featuring large spiders and purple color theme in their yard.

Homeowners typically have free-range when decorating for holidays

Just like when it comes to decorating for Christmas, homeowners are typically allowed to do whatever they like (within reason) to deck out their homes for Halloween. There’s no limit to how many pumpkins they’re allowed to carve, how many skeletons they can hang in the front yard or how many buckets of candy they can put out for trick-or-treaters.

But logic and reason have never stopped neighbors from getting upset about little things in the past. So Halloween decorations are certainly no exception. The specific rules will vary depending on where you live and whether or not you must adhere to the rules set by a homeowner’s association, but Kuester Management Group notes that there are a few decorations that might land residents in hot water.

First, they mention that any yard decor that makes noise might be considered a disturbance, and it might lead to some complaints from neighbors. Lights can also be disruptive if they’re shining into everyone’s windows all night long. 

Depending on the neighborhood, “yard art” might be prohibited too, which some Halloween decorations might fall into the umbrella of. And if your HOA happens to find any of your decorations offensive or disturbing, they might request that you remove them immediately. 

Apparently, scary Halloween decorations can sometimes even lead to homeowners being fined. Newsweek published an article discussing this, where they mentioned that some Halloween enthusiasts have even been fined thousands of dollars for their spooky decorations.  

But it’s wise for neighborhoods to set some ground rules to prevent conflicts

“We had it all—a fog machine, an elaborate graveyard setup and eerie sound effects,” one veterinarian told Newsweek. “We were fined for breaking the community rules, which was a bit disheartening, especially for the kids. It certainly put a damper on our Halloween festivities.”

It’s also important to consider how your decorations might later impact the community. If you cover your front yard in hay, for example, it’s best to make sure that hay doesn’t end up all over the sidewalk until Thanksgiving. And, of course, any particularly dangerous or terrifying decorations might not be a good idea for a neighborhood full of children.

To avoid encountering any issues between neighbors, Mulcahy Law Firm suggests that HOAs set clear rules defining exactly how residents can decorate for holidays. It might be wise to set a reasonable time limit for Halloween decorations to be displayed. For example, they can go up on the first of October, and they must be taken down by November 30th.

It may also be helpful to set designated hours when holiday lights must be turned off, as well as a maximum decibel level for any spooky sound effects or decorations that make noise. And if the neighborhood has a designated area where residents can set up communal decorations, that might reduce how many people will go all out in their own front yards.   

We would love to hear your thoughts on this story in the comments below, pandas. Would you be bothered if your neighbors put up fuzzy spiders and spooky decorations in their front yard? Feel free to weigh in. And then, you can find another Bored Panda article discussing Halloween decor right here! 

Some readers sided with the homeowner, noting that her decor sounds great

Screenshot of a Reddit conversation about Halloween decor where a neighbor threatens a couple over their yard display.

Screenshot of an online discussion about a neighbor threatening a couple over their Halloween decorations.

Comment text from user meezerbear9 expressing intention to report neighbor making threats over Halloween decor dispute.

Neighbor threatens couple over Halloween decor with aggressive demands to take it down or else.

Screenshot of an online comment urging the couple to file a police report after neighbor threatened them over Halloween decor.

Comment text on a forum discussing a neighbor threatening a couple over their Halloween decorations.

Screenshot of an online comment advising to install a doorbell camera to record threats from a neighbor over Halloween decor.

Screenshot of an online comment about a neighbor threatening a couple over their Halloween decorations.

Comment highlighting severe arachnophobia but saying purple fuzzy spider with googly eyes is not scary in Halloween decor debate.

Comment from an online discussion warning about possible threats to a Halloween decor display and suggesting precautions.

Comment discussing neighborhood dispute and threats related to couple’s Halloween decor and neighbor complaints.

Neighbor threatens couple over their elaborate Halloween decor display in a residential neighborhood.

Screenshot of an online comment defending a couple’s Halloween decor against a threatening neighbor complaint.

Neighbor threatens couple over their elaborate Halloween decorations after going all out with spooky decor display.

Comment on neighbor threatening couple over Halloween decor, discussing conflict and aggressive warnings.

Advice on handling neighbor threats after going all out with Halloween decorations in a dispute over yard displays.

Neighbor threatens couple with Halloween decor in dispute over elaborate outdoor decorations on their property.

Red and green Halloween spider decoration hanging outside a house, part of elaborate Halloween decor.

Screenshot of an online comment discussing neighbor threats over elaborate Halloween decorations and property rights.

Comment discussing how fake webbing used in Halloween decor can harm birds and small animals by trapping them.

Screenshot of a comment discussing a neighbor threatening a couple over their Halloween decor within HOA rules.

User comment discussing fear of spiders and opinion on Halloween decor despite phobia, linked to neighbor threatening couple over decorations.

Comment explaining a neighbor threatening a couple over their Halloween decorations due to differing opinions.

However, some thought she was being insensitive by refusing to accommodate her neighbor

Red and black Halloween spider decoration with a spider web covering the porch, showcasing spooky Halloween decor.

Neighbor threatens couple over Halloween decor displayed in their yard with intense decorations and spooky props.

Screenshot of an online discussion where a neighbor complains about Halloween decorations causing a phobia concern.

Comment discussing neighbor conflict over large realistic fake spiders in Halloween decor causing phobia triggers and petty spite.

Way back in 1964, people were starting to recgonize that computers were going to have a large impact on the world. There was not, at the time, very much prepackaged software, which meant if you were going to use a computer to do work, you were likely going to have to write your own programs. The tools to do that weren’t friendly to non-mathematicians.

Thus, in 1964, was BASIC created, a language derived from experiments with languages like DOPE (The Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment). The goal was to be something easy, something that anyone could use.

In 1977, the TRS-80, the Commodore PET, and the Apple II all launched, putting BASIC into the hands of end users. But it’s important to note that BASIC had already been seeing wide use for a decade on “big iron” systems, or more hobbyist systems, like the Altair 8800.

Today’s submitter, Coyne, was but a humble student in 1977, and despite studying at a decent university, brand spanking new computers were a bit out of reach. Coyne was working with professors to write code to support papers, and using some dialect of BASIC on some minicomputer.

One of Coyne’s peers had written a pile of code, and one simple segment didn’t work. As it was just a loop to print out a series of numbers, it seemed like it should work, and work quite easily. But the programmer writing it couldn’t get it to work. They passed it around to other folks in the department, and those folks also couldn’t get it to work. What could possibly be wrong with this code?

3010 O = 45
3020 FOR K = 1 TO O
3030   PRINT K
3040 NEXT K

Now, it’s worth noting, this particular dialect of BASIC didn’t support long variable names- you could use a single letter, or you could use a letter and a number, and that was it. So the short variable names are not explicitly a problem here- that’s just the stone tools which were available to programmers at the time.

For days, people kept staring at this block, trying to figure out what was wrong. Finally, Coyne took a glance, and in a moment was able to spot the problem.

I’ve done something nasty here, because I posted the correct block first. What the programmer had actually written was this:

3010 O = 45
3020 FOR K = 1 TO 0
3030   PRINT K
3040 NEXT K

The difference is subtle, especially when you’re staring at a blurry CRT late at night in the computer lab, with too little coffee and too much overhead lighting. I don’t know what device they were using for display; most terminals made sure to make O look different from 0, but I couldn’t be bold enough to say all of them did. And, in this era, you’d frequently review code on printed paper, so who knows how it was getting printed out?

But that, in the end, was the problem- the programmer accidentally typed a zero where they meant the letter “O”. And that one typo was enough to send an entire computer science department spinning for days when no one could figure it out.

In any case, it’s interesting to see how an “easy” to use language once restricted variable names to such deep inscrutability.

For C programmers of a certain age (antique), booleans represent a frustrating challenge. But with the addition of stdbool.h, we exited the world of needing to work hard to interact with boolean values. While some gotchas are still in there, your boolean code has the opportunity to be simple.

Mark‘s predecessor saw how simple it made things, and decided that wouldn’t do. So that person went and wrote their own special way of comparing boolean values. It starts with an enum:

typedef enum exop_t {
    EXOP_NONE,
    EXOP_AND,
    EXOP_OR,
    EXOP_EQUAL,
    EXOP_NOTEQUAL,
    EXOP_LT,
    EXOP_GT,
    EXOP_LEQUAL,
    EXOP_GEQUAL,
    EXOP_ADD,
    EXOP_SUBTRACT,
    EXOP_MULTIPLY,
    EXOP_DIV,
    EXOP_MOD,
    EXOP_NEGATE,
    EXOP_UNION,
    EXOP_FILTER1,
    EXOP_FILTER2
};

Yes, they did write an enum to compare booleans. They also wrote not one, but two functions. Let’s start with the almost sane one.

static bool compare_booleans (bool bool1,
                              bool bool2,
                              exop_t  exop)
{

    int32_t  cmpresult;

    if ((bool1 && bool2) || (!bool1 && !bool2)) {
        cmpresult = 0;
    } else if (bool1) {
        cmpresult = 1;
    } else {
        cmpresult = -1;
    }

    return convert_compare_result(cmpresult, exop);

}

This function takes two boolean values, and a comparison we wish to perform. Then, we test if they’re equal, though the way we do that is by and-ing them together, then or-ing that with the and of their negations. If they’re equal, cmpresult is set to zero. If they’re not equal, and the first boolean is true, we set cmpresult to one, and finally to negative one.

Thus, we’re just invented strcmp for booleans.

But then we call another function, which is super helpful, because it turns that integer into a more normal boolean value.

static boolean
    convert_compare_result (int32_t cmpresult,
                            exop_t exop)
{
    switch (exop) {
    case EXOP_EQUAL:
        return (cmpresult) ? FALSE : TRUE;
    case EXOP_NOTEQUAL:
        return (cmpresult) ? TRUE : FALSE;
    case EXOP_LT:
        return (cmpresult < 0) ? TRUE : FALSE;
    case EXOP_GT:
        return (cmpresult > 0) ? TRUE : FALSE;
    case EXOP_LEQUAL:
        return (cmpresult <= 0) ? TRUE : FALSE;
    case EXOP_GEQUAL:
        return (cmpresult >= 0) ? TRUE : FALSE;
    default:
        printf( "ERR_INTERNAL_VALn" );
        return TRUE;
    }
} 

We switch based on the requested operation, and each case is its own little ternary. For equality comparisons, it requires a little bit of backwards logic- if cmpresult is non-zero (thus true), we need to return FALSE. Also note how our expression enum has many more options than convert_compare_result supports, making it very easy to call it wrong- and worse, it returns TRUE if you call it wrong.

At least they made booleans hard again. Who doesn’t want to be confused about how to correctly check if two boolean values are the same?

It’s worth noting that, for all this code, the rest of the code base never used anything but EXOP_EQUAL and EXOP_NOTEQUAL, because why would you do anything else on booleans? Every instance of compare_booleans could have been replaced with a much clearer == or != operator. Though what should really have been replaced was whoever wrote this code, preferably before they wrote it.

“I started at 19, so I get the before and after pictures from when I’m 19 to 30 and I’m like, ‘I grew up. I lost baby weight in my face, and my face changed because I’m aging,’” she said.

“Everybody thought I had a nose job, and I’m like, ‘I’ve had the exact same nose. My cheeks got smaller. Thank you for bringing it up.’”

Image credits: MUBI