LAKEHURST – It is said that one’s home is their castle, and borough resident Sherri Soulliere is queen of a very unique castle. She not only celebrates Halloween; she lives it just about every day.
Even before the Halloween season arrived, she had many spooky decorations featured inside windows and on the exterior of her Second Street home. Granted, that display includes a Christmas elf as well.
It is the inside of that home, however, that is most intriguing. It features a unique mixture of horror film figures like Chucky, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kruger and Michael Meyers plus Spider-Man, rapper Little Wayne and a few Christmas characters from area dollar stores as well.
Soulliere is not a minimalist. She loves to decorate her home to add to the cozy factor and so there are blankets, pillows, stickers, even old lottery tickets that have found their place on the walls of her residence.
“I’ve lived here for 10 years,” she said. “I have cereal boxes, a Spider-Man kite hanging on the ceiling.” She has a number of Chucky dolls along with Chucky’s girlfriend Tiffany from the horror film and TV franchise featuring creepy dolls who have come to life.
“My daughter Jina made me my Chucky T-shirts,” Soulliere added. She told The Manchester Times that she was excited about having ordered Chucky and Tiffany’s child Glenn/Glenda who appears in some of the films and the Sy Fy Channel TV series.
“I lived in Las Vegas before coming here,” she said. “I know a lot of people would come in here and say this is weird, but I like it. I’ve been like this since I’ve been 12 years old. I’ve never liked blank walls. I had to cover my wall. Nothing in my house matches and I don’t care about anything matching. This is my house and it will just be getting more and more stuff,” she added.
In her kitchen is a shelf where several dolls share space. Urkel, from the 1990s sitcom “Family Matters” sits next to Chucky, a Cabbage Patch doll and Chucky’s girlfriend Tiffany. While the Urkel doll lost his glasses at some point, he still talks when you pull his string. She also has an Annabelle doll from the “Conjuring” horror film series.
Not everything in the house is strictly for fun however. Her home also features an area of tribute for her daughter Jennifer who died at the age of 10 in a 1991 car accident in Michigan.
Soulliere also has a love of animals and feeds two homeless cats, four groundhogs, a skunk, a possum, a fox and “a deer with a hurt leg.” She also loves turtles.
While Soulliere doesn’t look at her items as collection pieces, she does have a film collection of 950 movies and one special item is her Little Wayne pants that feature the rapper on them.
She also has a sparkly sequined pillow that is blue on one side but when you brush it over with your hand, reveals a photo of her and her boyfriend Dennis who died a few years ago. “My sister made that. I think it is cool.”
She loves Christmas as much as Halloween and across from her TV set in the living room is a Krampus figure that is still inside its box. The figure is from the Christmas horror film “Krampus” based on the mythological creature who captures children at Christmas time.
“People think I’m nuts but this is me,” she said laughing. “This house was built in 1825 when the railroad was being built. I like it.” She particularly likes her black skull with a gold tooth in his mouth and a plastic dagger through the head. “A friend of mine made it for me,” Soulliere added.
“I love Spider-Man. I have a Spider-man towel and a backpack somewhere,” she added. “People who come in here are amazed and they spend hours in here looking. This is my personality.”
Soulliere added, “I love people, I like taking care of people. When I was in Vegas, I worked for Circus Circus and Town Country Airlines. I love putting stuff up in my house. I have a problem going into the dollar stores. I see things and I pick them up to add to the walls.”
