It's hard to look across the remains of Bill Franzen's Halloween extravaganza and not wonder whether the scene—the briefcase shot through with protruding Barbie arms, the baby doll with a rotting face and the variety of severed rubber heads—is, somehow, a physical manifestation of the macabre maestro's internal landscape.

"A little bit, as far as that place where humor and something kind of spooky meet," was the writer's reply as he showed me around the week after what he said was 29 New St.'s final show. "Humor and suspense—they're both about release and tension, and these are kind of like still shots set up."

The annual spectacle drew so many visitors over Franzen's 15 years of decorating that the police closed the street each Halloween night.

Now, a week later, most of the yard is intact, but a dumpster is sitting in the driveway and a few key props, like a child-sized iron cage and a wishing well, were claimed by a woman in Norwalk for her own burgeoning Halloween display. Franzen described the pirate scene, the hillbilly shack and the baby-doll tea party scenes set up around the property with a paternal fondness, pointing out the head inside the lantern he constructed himself and the quirky yard-sale acquisitions.

But constructing and cleaning up the locally legendary display on his 1.1-acre property took a lot of effort and a decent chunk of cash, and Franzen listed various signs that his Halloween show had run its course. He can no longer count on his college-aged children's annual assistance, he said. Recent knee surgery slowed him down a bit. And one of the trees in his yard which he uses to anchor a scene may be dying.

"It's an incredible night," Franzen said, "but it is hard to put that much into one night. It's kind of putting all your eggs in one basket, you know?"

Franzen first caught Halloween fever when he moved to Ridgefield because, as a new homeowner with his wife, New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast, he had the freedom to decorate for the first time.

"I realized, 'Hey—Halloween!' I could put up a little something," he said. One thing led to another, and now he has three sheds full of skulls, rats, gorilla heads, cauldrons, a sarcophagus and a guillotine. The total effect is a detailed mishmash of funny, creepy and compelling, like so many Museum of Natural History dioramas re-imagined by Edward Gorey.

Aldrich Museum exhibitions director Richard Klein has argued that this ghoulish patchwork is a form of American folk art.

"[Franzen]'s taking the traditional Halloween decoration, and the haunted house and the spooky display, and he's taking it beyond where it usually resides," Klein said. 

"I think, in Bill's case, there's a very genuine impulse to create something," Klein said. "The connection with folk art I think is real, but it's not based on some high-falutin theory of any sort or trying to make 'art' with a capital A... But if you're making quilts, and you're kind of obsessed with it and you take it to kind of the next level, that's where it starts becoming art."

Franzen, too, waxes philosophical when reflecting on all the skeletons he has erected over the years. People live in the moment and lose concern with keeping up appearances, he said.

"I've never seen people better, even at weddings," Franzen said. "There's nobody second-guessing anybody on Halloween."

"It's going to be hard not to do this another year."