Last year, around this time, several weeks before Halloween, Michael Myers of Decatur, Indiana, called the city of Decatur and wanted to know what was up with the street light across from his house. See, Michael Myers of Decatur is a creepy figure, he explained. Michael Myers of Decatur needs that street light right now! Especially in October! Come on! It casts a dim, eerie glow across a narrow patch of sidewalk. It’s so perfect! Michael Myers of Decatur likes to stand beneath the lamp.
He likes to just stand there and watch the neighbors.
And never ever wave.
Michael Myers of Decatur doesn’t wave because Michael Myers of the “Halloween” movies doesn’t wave. Michael Myers of Decatur will also not talk to you if you try to talk to him. The original Michael Myers never talks, so Michael Myers of Decatur never talks.
When he removes the mask, he is just Evan Zimmerman, a career Air Force civil engineer. He is a casual soul, full of dry humor. He wears a trucker’s cap and joggers and has a flatscreen TV above the fireplace. His wife, Sabrina, is a nurse at a nearby hospital. They have three young sons, and they vacation in Disney World, and they shop at Costco. The thing is, Evan Zimmerman is also very enthusiastic about Halloween and “Halloween,” the nearly 50-year-old classic from John Carpenter.
What’s nice is, a lot of other people are enthusiastic about his enthusiasm, too.
Michael Myers of Decatur has dressed like Michael Myers and haunted his subdivision for 13 straight years. If you visit Facebook or YouTube with any regularity, you’ve likely run into his videos featuring him as Michael Myers cheerleading, camping, shopping, attending a county fair, and disposing of bodies. He has 4.5 million or so social media followers. He gets fan mail daily. He’s gone viral more times than he remembers. He’s been on “The Today Show” and interviewed by Kelly Clarkson. Jamie Lee Curtis herself, whose Laurie Strode was the fixation of Michael Myers, reposts him.
In Decatur, he’s become the local Santa Claus.
Only Michael Myers, and during autumn.
Once the mask goes on — which it does often around these parts come spooky season — again, he will not talk to you. He will not talk to his children. He will not reply to his wife, even as she pleads with him to stop. It’s something of a schtick in the videos, him and his wife as foils, him an unnerving presence in malls and fields and driveways, her begging him to come home. It’s not entirely schtick. Sabrina does not love this. Her husband is pure method. It gets very awkward. Decatur hosts the Callithumpian Parade, one of the oldest Halloween parades in the country. Michael Myers of Decatur is always a highlight, but Michael Myers will not wave. Not everyone appreciates this. Neighbors have called the police. His wife does worry. He carries a phony yet convincing butcher knife. He drives an old station wagon, a near replica of what Michael Myers drove in his 1978 debut. The one difference is Zimmerman changed the license plate to “STABBIN.”
He can recall more memorable encounters than you have time for.
Like, say, that time he stood rock still in the middle of the street, which he does occasionally. But this one time, a car stopped, sat a moment, then reversed quickly.
Michael Myers of Decatur takes pride in his work.
Certainly, the local cops know him well. He’s made a lot of friends on the police force. After he first walked his subdivision as Michael Myers in 2012, Decatur police were flooded with anxious calls. By the second year, the department started telling its workforce, if you get a call about a guy in a pale mask and mechanic’s suit, that’s Evan. These days, Decatur police make videos with him. They asked him recently to play Michael Myers in a video explaining Decatur’s new traffic roundabouts. And he asked them if they would shoot him with a taser. You know, for one of his videos. They said they’d think about it. “The other day I heard back,” he said: “‘Hey, if you still want this, we’ll do it …’”
Decatur is like a lot of Indiana. It’s surrounded by corn fields and silos. It offers pest-control billboards and vape shops. The red-brick downtown hasn’t changed in a century.
Quiet comes standard.
In other words, not so unlike the fictional Illinois suburb of Haddonfield in “Halloween.” The Michael Myers family lives in a small ranch home with free-range chickens in the yard. About now, there are gravestones in their yard, and ghouls literally coming out of the walls. A grim reaper waits by the front door. Within 48 hours of Labor Day, a black Halloween tree was erected in a corner and large bowls of Halloween candy were already out and full. It’s a warm, lovable home. Zimmerman, 42, has the unfazed hangdog eyes of an NFL quarterback in a postgame interview. When he agrees with you he says, “Absolutely.” Sabrina is pleasant, blunt and says things like “Holy cannoli!” without irony. He grew up in Decatur, the youngest of six. She moved here from California as a child.
By 2012, he was often being deployed around the world, usually during the holidays. Jordan. Iraq. Kuwait. Last year he did a stint in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He’s got a couple of years left. But 15 years ago during a break, eager to be part of a family holiday again, he was in Party City with Sabrina and noticed a Michael Myers mask.
“We were dirt poor then,” Zimmerman said. “I went to Sabrina and said, ‘Hey, do you care if I buy this?’ She’s like, why do you want it? I was, well, ‘I’ll just walk around the neighborhood, it’ll be a fun thing to do when I’m home.’ She’s like, and I remember this like it was yesterday, her last comment was, ‘Do what you want,’ then she walked off.”
The first time he strolled around the neighborhood he was nervous. He still gets nervous. Probably because he’s so convincing and unsettling if you’re not expecting it. While I was talking to Sabrina in their living room, he left and put on the costume and I glanced away and he was standing there, rock still, legs slightly splayed, in the kitchen.
Within a couple of Halloweens, he was walking the neighborhood every night of October. He traced every street and home, all 1.2 miles of subdivision. Sometimes children followed behind. Sometimes teenagers gathered behind in a pack and heckle. An occasional car would creep along behind. When it became too much of a spectacle, he would walk home, discouraged. But he also had something. He visited his friend Gary while Gary was taking out trash. Michael Myers of Decatur just stared at Gary until, being still new at this, he broke character: “I was worried Gary was about to have a heart attack.”
Soon Evan and Sabrina were shooting one or two videos in character and sending them privately to friends, like Halloween cards. In 2019, a friend suggested they should share one publicly. By morning, Michael Myers of Decatur was viral, and more videos came: Michael Myers picking up his son at football practice, Michael Myers riding Sabrina’s pink bike with a son (also wearing a Michael Myers mask) in the baby carrier.
He will break character for these videos, he will dance, he will golf.
Albeit intensely, as Michael Myers might.
The videos, usually shot by Sabrina, got more and more ambitious, the music cues pulled from the original film, the images not so removed from Carpenter’s plaintive ‘70s look. Michael Myers working the front desk of an elementary school. Michael Myers bowling. Michael Myers playing Carpenter’s score on a keyboard in his driveway, with a dancing mini-Michael Myers (his son Harrison), was watched more than 14 million times on YouTube. Michael Myers in a Fort Wayne department store, plinking at the iconic theme on the store’s grand piano while Sabrina seethes off camera (“Take it off right now. I’m embarrassed. People are staring. Evan, please don’t.”) was seen 40 million times. He’s looked into copyright infringement but never heard a peep from anyone.
By the end of the pandemic, Zimmerman’s neighbors were asking when was he going out in costume again, telling him about relatives in Alaska who follow him on Facebook, and so on. Sabrina’s catch phrase in the videos — “You’re an idiot” — became a hashtag. An Indiana artist carved Michael Myers into a tree in his side yard. Zimmerman bought a black golf cart and covered it with Michael Myers and Sabrina’s catch phrase. He began getting requests to appear at hospitals, sporting events. He started signing autographs.
“It’s been good for Decatur,” said Max Miller, owner of nearby Famous Monster Pizza, which is packed with horror memorabilia, including a signed Michael Myers of Decatur photo. “People come in hoping he’s here. And Evan does stop by. He just stares in the window. Everyone thought it was weird at first, now it’s definitely a source of local pride.”
Sabrina is more mixed on this whole thing, despite the success. So are the kids.
On a recent September day, she watched her husband, in costume, demonstrate his moves. He walked with an unnaturally tight efficiency, exactly like the movie character. He walked into the street. He walked out of the street. He stood a while on the sidewalk.
“By this point, I don’t think it’s creepy,” she said, watching. “It’s like watching someone else. At first, my embarrassment, my anger, was legit. I’d yell at him and he would not break character. He’d just stare. Which made me more mad. Watch how he doesn’t swing his arms. He doesn’t move his neck either. I don’t know if he dreams about Michael Myers but he talks about him a lot, to the point where I’m like ‘Yeah, yeah …’ It’s constant. But I think I get sick of it really when I need something done around this house and I’m talking to him but I know what’s really reeling inside of his head.”
Zimmerman keeps a notebook of ideas for Michael Myers videos, organizing them on a spreadsheet. For this Halloween, last I checked with him, he had exactly 65 new ideas. “Destroy finished puzzle.” “Powder sugar doughnuts.” “State Farm commercial.” “How it feels to lose Connect Four.” “Dress dog up in Michael Myers outfit … take her for a walk.”
And way more.
The meat of Michael Myers of Decatur, though, is the nightly routine. From Oct. 1 until Halloween, he walks his neighborhood nightly. People drive in from Ohio, Illinois and Michigan to catch a glimpse. As a kid growing up in Decatur, he was poor. He doesn’t remember his Halloween costumes well. As an adult, he owns three blue mechanic jumpsuits. His boots are his standard military boots. His fake knife, he bought off Etsy. His mask (custom made) costs $300; he owns four. When he returns home from his nightly stalking, “he smells like rubber mask,” Sabrina said.
There are ups and downs.
People knit him Halloween blankets and Michael Myers shawls. He and Sabrina make a small amount from the videos, not even three figures a year. An AMC Theater once asked him to remove his mask or leave. (The knife was fine.) A few days later, he received a care package from Universal. That said, a man down the street threatened to pull a gun on him. Sabrina gets emails from men complaining that a woman must never speak to her husband with such contempt, however performative. Kelly Clarkson introduced him as being from Decatur, Illinois.
“That one really haunts me,” he said.
“I don’t think you always get the attention this brings to our home,” Sabrina said, turning to him. Indeed, on Halloween and the days leading up to the holiday, the police erect barriers and direct traffic in this otherwise quiet neighborhood. Cars crawl through the streets hoping for a peek. People line up on the sidewalk on Halloween to get pictures with him and his house, which is augmented with a 25-feet-tall inflatable Michael Myers. By Nov. 1, the family is exhausted.
The scare, though, remains the thing.
Michael Myers of Decatur remembers a woman from a far-off farm community who messaged him online to see if he would be out walking. Later that night, her car appeared on his street. She didn’t see him as he approached in her blind spot. He jiggled her door handle. Her scream was deafening.
“She peeled out. We never saw or heard from her again. Just the coolest thing ever.”
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com