Viral Dallas Halloween Decorator is Back With an Actual Truck Crashed in His Yard

With more than 10 million views across his TikTok posts alone, it’s difficult to believe that local spooky season hero Steven Novak actually doesn’t like the holiday that brought him virality.

“[My partner] has to remind me to put on a costume, because frankly, I don’t like Halloween,” Novak tells us. “What I’m doing has nothing to do with Halloween; it just happens to take place during Halloween. Halloween is an excuse for me to do crazy shit outside — I’d do it all year long if they let me, but you won’t see any ghosts or pumpkins in my yard.” 

Instead, the man who once got his neighbors all up in arms about a gory display at his former M Streets residence takes a more intellectual approach, planning months out for what will ultimately be this year’s theme. After moving to a more receptive-to-scares neighborhood in Oak Cliff, he began concepting the décor currently adorning his home. He began planning this year’s treatment nearly six months ago. 

Growing up as “the classic kid who likes to take everything apart” means Novak always begins with a big concept — in this case, the idea of a crashed helicopter was one he’d been mulling over for years. 

“I’m hyperactive, so I’m always working on things,” Novak says. “I have stacks of notebooks full of random shit that just pops in my brain, and sometimes during the year, Halloween jumps in my noodle. The idea of a crashed helicopter had been on the books, and I actually found one, but my partner thought aviation was a bit risqué. She’s a skydiver, so she knows a lot of people are sensitive about plane crashes.” 

Rose Cobey, the partner in question, is also a little queasy about blood, so Novak has pivoted further in recent years to more conceptual stories, using self-built animatronics and props. In this case, the crashed helicopter transformed into an upside-down truck, and he wrote a back story about zombies to support it. One video previewing this year’s setup already has more than a million views.

“I was trying to explain why there was a truck that crashed in my yard, and it just popped in my head that they were transporting biohazard material, so it’s going to be zombies — that’s why they’re wearing hazmat suits,” Novak says. “I think there was a leak in one of the barrels, and the driver started getting zombified and crashed, and there’s a spill. That’s why it’s very secretive and why the truck is unmarked.” 

Novak named this year’s figures “Larry, Moe and Curly” after the classic comedy trio from The Three Stooges. He sketched out the scene four months ago on a chalkboard, then refined it through page after page of drawings before moving the ideas into a 3D rendering program called Blender. Once Novak works out each figure’s dimensions, he fine-tunes the builds and decides what materials he can use to transform his dreams into reality. And, he says, “Once I decide how to get my head around the material, I’m unstoppable.” 

In the case of Larry (a headless hazmat-suited guy swinging from a tree), Novak learned to weld, practicing in his garage for a month to create the steel and aluminum figure. For Moe, his “thirsty zombie,” he welded together an iron figure strong enough to stand on two legs with a 55-gallon barrel over its head. Moe serves as a fountain of sorts, with a tube running from arm to leg.

There are also small nods to Novak’s previous displays — repurposed gory body parts are scattered around the scene from his notoriously viral year. Curly’s figure wears the Beetlejuice mask from last year’s concept, and once Novak got his hands on the final prop, he decided to add Shemp, the fourth Stooge, as a character flung from the wreckage. 

Until just a week or so ago, Novak was lamenting to his vast TikTok audience about his inability to afford a vehicle to anchor the scene, as he was over his typical $5,000 budget per scene. Donations poured in from around the globe, with one fan from Norway Paypal-ing him a thousand dollars to help secure a ’92 Nissan, which he has adorned with lighting and fabric to mimic “flames.” 

“One of my rules (for the scenes) is it has to be plausible and real,” Novak says. “There’s a narrative. If they were infected, there’s a reason for it. It’s not a fake truck; it’s a real truck. I needed it to have no engine or gas tank so it would meet code compliance. I’ve got it rigged up so it looks like the lights are running, but to my rule, I don’t want anything fake — they have to be real light sources. It’s those restrictions that guide the thing into being what it is. If I just lugged in spotlights, it would completely break the immersion.” 

His attention to detail keeps followers coming back and brings him new ones — the grandchildren of two of the Stooges are happily following along on social media as Novak continues to adjust and tweak to the 11th hour and beyond, adding to the 300-plus hours he’s already spent concepting and building the scene. 

He’s adding more lasers, more flames, and a citizen zombie to potentially attack poor Shemp. He’s also considering patenting the “feat of physics” he achieved in devising a figure that can swing with its own power, musing, “I might as well let the world have it instead of it collecting dust in my garage.” 

But, as always, Novak is about 10 steps ahead of the rest of us. He is already figuring out how to reuse, repurpose and recycle his inventions for next year’s display.

“When (Larry) doesn’t have his costume, he looks like the Terminator,” Novak says. “I was pissed I had to cover it up. It’s poor taste to have guns involved in a Halloween display, but with Terminator robots, I can have laser guns. I’m starting to think maybe next year I can have a Halloween display with Terminator robots and laser tag, and people can shoot the robots, and they’ll fall down like a video game. Laser tag Terminator — it’s going to be awesome.”  

You can check out the spooktacular display at 1414 Lansford Avenue through November or follow Novak on TikTok or Instagram.