Anyone who has been to the Harvard Public Library in the past two weeks may have seen a bottleneck of children—and perhaps a few adults—staring wide-eyed at a spooky Halloween Town diorama set up near the front desk.
Its creator, who comes every couple of days to spray the live moss and make sure none of the characters or objects has suffered a mishap, may be standing nearby, delighting in the children’s excitement. She might point out a detail they may have missed, but longtime Harvard resident Teddy Coffin rarely reveals herself as the person behind the annual appearance of this amazing creation.
“It’s grown like Topsy,” said Coffin in a recent phone conversation. The display started in the early 1980s as a single, black, cragged tree with arm-like branches reaching out to grab passers-by. It sat on a tray of live moss, set up on a counter in the old library. Coffin had made it to fulfill her turn bringing weekly flowers to the town library as part of the Garden Club of Harvard’s commitment to community service. It was a stretch, but the moss counted as a plant, said Coffin. Then she started adding ghosts, skeletons, and other figures around the tree, and by the second year in the new library, she had created a diorama. She made some trees out of twigs and sprayed them black, but mostly she bought the items. Every year she would add a figure, sometimes mechanized, and usually purchased at Cataldo’s in Littleton. She said starting every September she was on the lookout for a new addition to her masterpiece. One purchase—appropriately—was made in Salem.
Teddy Coffin’s Halloween Town diorama spooks passersby near the front desk of the Harvard Public Library. After 40 years of showing her collection, she hopes someone will continue the tradition. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Her favorite part of the display is the witch on top of a hill in a small cemetery, stirring her cauldron with her broom. The broom used to go around, said Coffin. A skeleton with a lantern keeps the witch company, and nearby another skeleton is “pushing up the daisies.” The other day Coffin noticed the daisies out of place and suspected a hand had reached out and dislodged them.
A very appealing part of the scene is the parade of costumed trick-or-treaters being guided down the path by ghosts and the light of jack-o’-lanterns. And all dog lovers will get a chuckle out of the skeleton dog who has treed a black cat.
Coffin keeps the display items in her attic, packed away in their original boxes. They are quite fragile, she said, and sometimes she has to perform surgery with glue. Each year, around two weeks before Halloween, she takes the boxes to the library and assembles a different version of a spooky Halloween. She has no plan; “I just fly by the seat of my pants,” said Coffin. She uses fresh moss to cover up the wires that light up the many jack-o’-lanterns (and to satisfy the Garden Club). It takes a while to set up, but Coffin genuinely enjoys doing it.
“I love Halloween,” Coffin confessed. She recalled how in the early 1970s she would decorate her house and pipe scary music to the outside, welcoming about 60 trick-or-treaters. She was sorry when all the kids started going to the town center for Halloween and none came to her house anymore. In part, setting up the display in the library is her way of recapturing the fun of seeing kids enjoying Halloween.
But everything runs its course, and Coffin is looking for someone to whom she can pass on the diorama collection. She said she may keep the original spooky tree, just as a reminder of the years of fun she had providing Halloween delight to children and adults alike. She said she is happy to show her successor how she set things up. But, she said, another person can use their creativity to do things in a different way. “I’d hate to have no one take over,” said Coffin.
While she may be giving up the diorama, there is a Halloween trick Coffin will continue to pull off, something that is a delightful treat to all who notice. It’s best to come upon it by surprise. But for those who want to be sure not to miss it, as you walk toward the door of the library, look to the low bank of shrubbery to the right, and there …
