Sandy Springs couple gears up for Halloween bash

Halloween starts in September at Buz and Debra Psathas’ house.

That’s when Buz Psathas begins piecing together the elaborate displays that have made Halloween night legendary in his Sandy Springs community over the past 15 years.

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PHIL SKINNER / pskinner@ajc.com/AJC

Buz Psathas puts finishes touches on a grizzly operating room scene in his basement.

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PHIL SKINNER / pskinner@ajc.com/AJC

Detail of a fake head in a portable toilet for Buz Psathas’ huge community Halloween party in Sandy Springs.

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PHIL SKINNER / pskinner@ajc.com/AJC

Buz Psathas(left, obscured) & his brother in-law, Darrell Daviswork to secure an inflatable spider on top of a shed.

Photos: See how the Psathas decorate

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Skeletons crawling out of graves, oversized spiders and other ghoulish sights are all part of the spectacle that takes over the Psathas’ property at the corner of Timberlane Terrace and Pine Brook Drive.

Styrofoam tombstones that bear the names of friends and family are a highlight of the event, said Sherry Pringham, a regular at the party.

“They think of such clever things to write on the tombstones,” she said. “Each year I can’t wait to see what they’ve done new.”

The neighborhood party started as a simple get-together with a few friends and their kids, Psathas said. But each year it kept getting bigger because friends invited friends.

“I know we’ve spent over $1,000 on this before,” said Debra Psathas of the one-night-only affair. “And we’ve had to cut back on some things because it was getting so expensive.”

The couple used to provide food and drinks for the guests, for free, but when attendance numbers started reaching 200 and 300, that became a gargantuan task, she said.

“Last year we told people to bring something and put it on the table for everybody to enjoy,” Debra Psathas said. “But that didn’t work as well as I hoped. But we won’t have that problem this year.”

A neighbor, and regular attendee who has a catering service, has offered to supply the food this year, Buz Psathas said.

“I mean why not do this?” asked Charlie Hellem. “They’ve been entertaining us for this long, so I figured we could help out.”

Hellem said he and his wife Melissa are bringing a 30-foot mobile kitchen to the party to feed the masses.

“What this has become is a real community event,” said City Councilman Tibby DeJulio, who represents the area. “I’ve been going for some time, and I look forward to it each year.”

DeJulio, who also has a tombstone that is part of the display, said the Pasathases are preforming an important community service by giving neighbors a place to meet and greet each year.

Buz Psathas, who is a automotive dealership consultant 51 weeks out of the year, said in the beginning he’d take a couple of days off to pull the decorations together. But he’s needed a solid week in recent years because the display continues to grow. He and his wife are going to have to start scaling the party back, he said.

“We’re getting older and we’ve been doing this a long time,” he said. “It’s time. Not this year, not next year, but the year after that we’ll have to make it smaller.”

But DeJulio is not buying it. “He’s been saying that for years,” the councilman said. “He and Debra have so much fun watching everybody else have so much fun, I don’t think he’ll actually do it.”

“How about this, I’ll believe it when I see it,” he added.