Like a recurring nightmare, the viral Preston Hollow home is back with a new round of gaudy holiday decorations.

Alyssa Fields

If you’re tired of reading about the McMansion in Preston Hollow with gaudy taste and an unmatched love of the holidays, believe us, we’re tired of writing about it. Unfortunately, the horrors persist, and the house on Deloache Avenue is back for Halloween with its scariest theme: Talafreako’s Terror. 

Previously, our former news staff writer, Emma Ruby, was tasked with taking the 15-minute drive to one of the most expensive zip codes in Texas every time the owner decided it was time to be a bad neighbor, a public nuisance and a drain on city resources. But with her gone, it’s become my burden. So off I went to live my waking nightmare to take pictures of this year’s house of horrors. 

This trip cost me at least $3 in gas and led to a strange interaction with a passerby who seemed to love the Talafreako signs. Where’s the treat?

The house has achieved virality many times over for its ostentatious holiday displays. Lines on the tiny residential street get so bad, the city has to dispatch police officers to conduct traffic control. In December 2024, controlling the frenzy for the house pulled 71 officers off their usual patrol work and cost taxpayers a whopping $25,000 (which is probably what the homeowner’s electricity bill is each December).

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As much pity as I have for myself and my newfound beat covering real estate revulsions, the true victims of this torment are the neighbors of the house, who lose access to their driveways and sanity as the month-long Christmas display shines at a brightness that rivals the sun all through the night. They’re lucky Halloween is a comparatively dark holiday. 

Who was going to tell me my ex-boyfriend got a new job? He’s never looked better.

Last year, the councilmember who represents the neighborhood, Gay Donnell Willis, received so many complaints about the nonstop chaos that she proposed imposing hefty fines for light displays that require police to control traffic. While the owner of the house may have horrible taste, far too much free time and an excess of wealth to spend on $300 12-foot plastic skeletons each, he also has a sense of humor. This year’s display is lined with “Recall Gay Willis” signs. 

If my quick Google search of “big ass yard skeleton” yielded the correct results, just one of these big ass yard skeletons is $300.

As the saying goes, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies prominently displayed in your front yard in a gaudy several-thousand-dollar holiday display.”

Like any good installation, there’s a centerpiece. This year’s is a “No Talafreako for Texas” sign in a shark’s mouth. There’s an identical sign held in the corner held by an imposing clown. If the message is “Only clowns support Ken Paxton,” we agree. 

Not the first clown we’ve seen holding one of these signs.

The yard is full of ghouls and goblins, ogres and oddities, skeletons and scares. But the scariest part of the entire display is one tiny detail by the driveway. It’s so frightening we are offering a rare opportunity for our readers to close the page before they continue. 

Seriously, click away unless you have the gastrointestinal fortitude of a tank. 

Please, if you watch horror movies through your fingers, you will not be able to handle what’s next. 

The scariest decoration in the entire yard is this sign.

Per usual, just because it’s tacky doesn’t mean it’s cheap. Trick or treat.