ASHLAND — Growing up, Charlene Allen’s four children just loved it when she decorated the house for Christmas.

In fact, the more decorations she put up, the more they loved it. The more the neighbors loved it. The more it grew like a thing with a life of its own.

Before long, Allen’s Ashland front yard became something of a monument to the holidays: Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s, Easter, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas.

And in October, of course, Halloween.

"I wanted to do something fun for the kids — that was the heart of it," says Allen, 52. "It just caught on. You wouldn’t believe all the fun it brings up in people. They stop all the time and need to meet me and find out who would do such a thing. I’m always getting notes of thanks in my mailbox or taped to my door."

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This Halloween like all the others, the house at 1155 Greenmeadows Way is festooned inside and out with jack-o-lanterns, devils, witches, ghosts and spiders sure to attract bemused gawkers day and night.

A naturally creative person, Allen sews up mannequins of scarecrows and Santas (plopping them in lawn chairs), scours yard sales and thrift shops for doo-dads and whatnots reflecting any holiday theme and gets plenty of holiday-esque gifts from friends, even strangers.

"I’m a pretty easy person to buy for," Allen jokes.

You might think she spends a fortune on decorations and hundreds of hours putting them up, but, says Allen, this is no "big, gorgeous, Martha Stewart mansion" with precious decorations like you’d see on a holiday tour.

"This is a Kmart home," she jokes, pointing to the cheap plastic jack-o-lanterns she picked up for a dime each on clearance. Adorning the yard are weatherproof skeletons made of plastic plates (cost: about 2 cents each), stuffed Draculas and Frankensteins, strings of orange lights and a skull and bony hands reaching out of the garden soil.

As the centerpiece of each yard display, Allen features a large, inflatable set piece powered by a fan. Depending on the holiday, it might be a ghost, Santa, a teddy bear holding a big heart or Uncle Sam (at the Fourth of July).

Inside, a huge spider web rises from behind the couch, giant black widows crawl the walls and a witch as a table centerpiece awaits the inaugural meeting of the Witches and Bitches Black Hat Society, a "sisterhood of maturing women" dedicated to sipping cocktails and having fun, says Allen.

So lighted up is her yard half the year, that Allen must run extension cords all over the house and yard, trying to find outlets on different circuits — and making sure not to run the washer, dryer or dishwasher at night.

"We love it and are always looking forward to the next holiday to see what she’s added," says Nancy Zapell, the neighbor directly across the street. "She puts in a tremendous amount of creativity and work and, frankly, it really takes me off the hook for decorating. Hers does it for the neighborhood."

The Allen kids, when they were growing up, had no idea the layouts were unusual, said family friend Becky DeBoer. "They would go ho-hum till they saw all their friends being blown away by it."

Allen unleashedher decorating instincts for proms, homecomings and other school-related events. The home became a haven for her children’s friends, whom she would often find in the morning, sleeping all over the floors.

She even put up a birthday display with balloons on the Ashland High School lawn to surprise her son Gary, now 31. Was he embarrassed? "Of course he was! That’s the whole point," says Allen.

"After the kids were grown," she adds, "I wanted to quit, but the neighbors wouldn’t let me. Six or seven of them would stop by and say they love it and can’t wait to see what I do next. I would go open a box (storage is in the home’s crawl space and attic) and be flooded with such nice memories that pretty soon I was hanging up a few things and couldn’t stop."

Allen’s husband, restaurateur Gerald Allen, who leaves all the decorating to her, says everyone honks, smiles and waves at the house, which has become the holiday spectacle of the Tolman- Siskiyou Boulevard area.

What does her husband think of this decorating? She laughs.

"He thinks I’m insane."

John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland.E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.