They call it “the witch’s house.”

In the four years since Merlyn and Jeanne Boesch began putting the pumpkins, spooks and witches up outside their home at 520 8. Broadway, the house has become an extra Halloween treat for New Ulm residents.

THEY COME from all over the town to trick-or-treat at the house or just to look. They’ve even come from as far as the statehouse to admire it.

A state representative from Rochester, Mrs. Boesch recalls, once noticed the decorated house while driving through New Ulm. Is so impressed him that he stopped to ask if he could take a picture of it and his daughter.

Of course, state representatives from Rochester aren’t the only ones who stop by to take photos.

Numerous residents from New Ulm do it as well, including its mayor, Carl Wyczawski, who stopped Mrs. Boesch on the street earlier this year to extend his personal thanks for the Boesch’s contribution to the Halloween atmosphere.

“When I go by, I smile to myself,” he told her. “I don’t go by because of the kids. I go by because I enjoy it.”

THE BOESCHES originally decorated the house because it was “just kind of something to do,” Mrs. Boesch relates. She and her daughter had purchased a wig at a rummage sale, she recalls, and she thought that it would make a good witch.

Mrs. Boesch mentioned putting it up as a decoration and her daughter strongly supported the idea, telling her that if her mother didn’t do it, she would.

So the weekend before Halloween, Mrs. Boesch and her daughter decorated the house for a party for her niece and nephew.

“Everyone seemed to enjoy it so much,” Mrs. Boesch says. “We’ve gotten letters from people in town who enjoy it and that’s certainly an incentive.”

SINCE THEN, it’s become an annual tradition for the Boesches who store most of the decorations In their garage. They only thing that has changed is that they put it up about the first weekend in October now.

“It’s just something different to put around,” says Mrs. Boesch who also goes all out with outside Christmas and Easter decorations. “It’s just a little decoration.”

The work involved, she says, doesn’t amount to all that much. The spooks are made from old white sheets that people don’t use any more; the clothes for the scarecrow are purchased for a few pennies from rummage sales.

“It’s work, but I guess it’s so much fun, you don’t think of it as work,” she states.

What also is fun, she says, is watching cars stop as they pass, and, in particular, watching the children.

On Halloween night, the family plays “haunting music” on its record player, a nephew or someone usually comes over to pass out the treats and Mrs. Boesch sits back to watch the children.

“It’s so much fun watching,” she exclaims. “Every Halloween I sit here and watch each kid come up the step.”

OLDER CHILDREN, she thinks, don’t have as much fun on Halloween as children used to,mainly because they’re so busy collecting candy they forget to have a good time.

“The little ones, now they really enjoy themselves in their costumes,” she adds.

And it is the little children she enjoys the most. Her husband remembers one little goblin who came up to trick-or-treat the house last year.

“‘Mommy, I think I’m getting scared,’ he told her,” Boesch recalls.

THE BOESCHES also have a new little goblin this year. A 5-year-old Korean boy was adopted by their daughter and Mrs. Boesch says she can barely wait to enjoy Halloween with him.

After decorating the house this year,she took the lad by the hand, told him to close his eyes and led him to the front of the house to see a surprise.

When she got him there, little Ryan Michael McMahan opened his eyes wide.

“Good idea, Granma,” he exclaimed. “Good idea.”

New Ulm Daily Journal

Oct. 29, 1975