This Baton Rouge couple goes all out for spooky season, transforming their home with themed displays
Since getting married in 2022, Niki and Sean Forbes have used elaborately themed decor at their home on Queen Island Drive in Woodlawn Estates to share their love of Halloween with their community.
“I remember as a kid trick-or-treating and seeing these people who went overboard, and it blew my mind how awesome some of these houses were,” Sean says. “I like to be able to be that person now.”
The couple’s wedding took place right before Halloween in 2022, so decorating for the holiday meant a quick turnaround. With little time to come up with a theme and purchase decorations, Sean and Niki had to improvise with what they had post-wedding.
“Marigold is big in my culture from being from Mexico and her culture from being from India, and it’s also big in Indian weddings, so we had a lot of marigold hanging around the house,” Sean says. “So we ended up going with a Day of the Dead theme.”
Since then, with a whole year in advance to plan, the sky has been the limit for the Forbeses’ Halloween themes.
One year, they played on arachnophobia, building a tunnel of hanging spiders, wrapping plastic skeletons in cobwebs and projecting spider silhouettes from inside their house onto their windows. They even dressed up as exterminators.
Last year, the couple brought the spookiest character from one of history’s most famous ghost tales to life: the Headless Horseman of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow fame. Along with a horse and rider, Sean and Niki built an entire cornfield on one side of their yard complete with scarecrows, and a graveyard on the other, using a fog machine to fully immerse sightseers in the world of Sleepy Hollow.
This year, however, the Forbeses are tapping into a different kind of fear. “Based off of what was happening with the lettuce and Taco Bell recently, and my wife’s utmost love for Taco Bell, we’re doing Taco Hell,” Sean says.
A graveyard of discontinued menu items, a haunted drive-thru with a chilling voice taking your order, and a skeleton feeling the effects of his fast-food meal will complete the Taco Hell-scape, inspired by the recent cyclospora outbreak.
The couple started prepping for this Halloween months ahead of time, with all their decorations ready to go in one of their guest rooms.
“The inside of the house right now, unfortunately, looks like a Halloween hurricane came through, but things are slowly getting put in place,” Sean says.
This article was originally published in the October 2026 issue of 225 Magazine.
