Thief Steals Her Ghosts but Neighbors Lift Her Spirits

A Halloween that started with a nasty trick is ending with a nice treat for Jeanne Threadgold.

After thieves skulked in to steal a one-of-a-kind collection of fanciful ghosts and goblins that the 66-year-old widow used to decorate the lawn of her new Mar Vista home, strangers stepped forward to help replace them.

“I went in and cried when I saw they were missing,” Threadgold said.

She did the same thing when others living in her neighborhood on Los Angeles’ Westside began knocking on her door.

Threadgold moved to the Butler Avenue neighborhood four months ago after living 45 years in Laguna Beach.

It was in that coastal community, known for its local artists, that Threadgold had acquired the collection of handmade, sewn-together scarecrows, witches, Draculas, stylized pumpkins, bats and spiders that she placed in her frontyard three weeks ago.

She had carefully selected the decorations to replace a 30-year-old collection of Halloween artifacts destroyed when the 1993 Laguna Canyon brush fire burned down her home.

Her husband, Frank, rebuilt the place. But after he died, Threadgold decided to move closer to her son and his family in West Los Angeles.

When she discovered that her 16 decorations were missing last week, Threadgold found herself wishing she’d stayed away from the big city.

“ ‘This is not like Laguna.’ That’s what I kept saying to myself,” she said.

Threadgold reported the theft to police and then painted a sign and nailed it to an old, gnarled pepper tree in front of her house--the tree from which she had hung her most prized witch decoration.

“To the persons who stole our Halloween decorations and fun from the children: May God bless you--you need all the help you can get,” the poster stated.

Her doorbell started ringing after that. Her new neighbors were dropping in to apologize for her rude welcome to Mar Vista and to offer help.

“I couldn’t believe it. One came with two bags of decorations. One brought a spider, another a paper skeleton. Others brought pumpkins and one lady gave me a bag of tangerines.”

Within several days, 20 people had stopped by. One, neighbor Ernie Griffith, explained that the ancient pepper tree that the witch had hung from was the tree featured in the movie “Gone With the Wind.” A scene with Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh on a swing was filmed at the tree a dozen years before the Mar Vista neighborhood was subdivided in 1950, said Griffith--who also said Butler Avenue is named after the film’s Rhett Butler character.

Threadgold has posted a thank-you sign on the old tree and she plans to display her replacement decorations at a party she is hosting today for her 8-year-old granddaughter, Caitlin. She’ll put them out again on Halloween night, too.

And since this is L.A. and not Laguna, people on Butler Avenue will be watching out for them.