Police Warn Of Halloween Costume False Reports; 'Costumes Are Costumes,' Department Clarifies

WAUKESHA — The Waukesha Police Department issued a guidance memo this week reminding residents that Halloween costumes, yard decorations, and trick-or-treating are not, on their own, cause for alarm, after a sharp rise in Nextdoor reports describing neighbors in makeup and inflatable lawn props as potential threats.

Department data cited in the memo shows 23 reports of 'suspicious persons' or 'suspicious activity' filed through the app in the past 10 days, up from 3 in the same window last year. Officers who responded to the calls found, in order: a man in a Frankenstein costume walking his dog, a 7-foot inflatable ghost secured to a porch railing with zip ties, and a teenager practicing a juggling act for a church youth group talent show.

The Frankenstein Call

The Frankenstein report came in at 7:42 p.m. on October 16 from a resident on Meadowbrook Lane, who described a 'large green figure moving unnaturally' near a mailbox. Responding officers identified the figure as Gary Oberholtzer, 44, a Meadowbrook resident for eleven years, walking his beagle, Hopscotch, while wearing a costume he'd purchased for a work party the following weekend.

Oberholtzer said he was asked to produce identification twice during the four-minute encounter. 'I had the makeup on because I didn't want to put it on twice in one week,' he said. 'The officer was very professional about it. He also said my neck bolts looked store-bought, which, fair, they are.'

The Ghost Problem

The inflatable ghost, a 7-foot, internally lit model purchased from a seasonal retailer, drew a separate report after dark, when its interior fan briefly cut out and left it slumped against a porch post before reinflating. A Nextdoor user flagged the moment as a 'creepy figure, possibly a person in distress' in a post that generated 31 comments before being resolved by its owner, who confirmed it was decorative and not, in the department's language, a welfare matter.

Wanda Trebilcock, a longtime Nextdoor contributor in the Fox River area, said she stood by her decision to flag the ghost even after learning what it was. 'I'd rather be the one who says something and is wrong than the one who says nothing,' Trebilcock said. 'That's just been my approach to the app this whole year.'

"We're not asking anyone to stop reporting things. We're asking people to look at the thing for maybe six more seconds before they report it."

— Officer Dana Kolpack, Waukesha Police Department public information officer

Department Guidance

The memo, distributed to patrol officers and posted to the department's own Nextdoor account, asks residents to 'contextualize seasonal activity' before filing a report, and specifically lists costumes, tombstone props, fog machines, and 'convincingly lifelike' animatronics as examples of items that, per the memo, 'are costumes.'

Kolpack said the department does not track individual users' report histories, but acknowledged that several addresses appeared more than once in the 10-day window. 'We're not naming names,' Kolpack said. 'But if you've called in four different Halloween decorations since the 12th, you might be the baseline problem here, not the neighborhood.'

The department said it does not plan to change its response protocol, which still requires an officer to physically confirm any report describing a person in apparent distress, regardless of the time of year or the likelihood of costume involvement. Kolpack said the average response time to a 'suspicious person' call during the current spike is 11 minutes, compared to a department-wide average of 14.

Oberholtzer said he plans to wear the same costume for trick-or-treating on October 31 and has pre-notified three neighbors by text. 'I figured it was easier than getting carded again,' he said. 'Hopscotch doesn't love the smell of the latex either, honestly, that might be the bigger issue.'