Passerby calls 911 after mistaking Army veteran's Halloween decorations for a real-life plane crash
An 85-year-old Army veteran’s Halloween prank has proved to be a soaring success.
Pickerington, Ohio, resident Delbert Holsinger staged a fake plane crash in his front yard for Halloween, and a passerby thought it was real. So real, in fact, the person called 911 to report a plane crash.
The Violet Township Fire Department and the Ohio State Highway Patrol responded to a call reporting the apparent downed plane in Holsinger’s front lawn on Thursday. The scene consisted of a sideways yellow ultralight aircraft that appeared to be in pieces.
“Someone drove by very quickly and either didn’t get a full look at it or possibly in jest called and thought it would be funny for us to run up there and check it out,” Violet Township Assistant Fire Chief Jim Paxton told Yahoo Lifestyle. “It was meant to be a Halloween decoration. If you looked at it at a reasonable speed, you could tell what it was,” he explained.
There were even two fake skeletons in the front seat — one of which had a witchlike wig.
“Police called us when we were on our way and told us they had word it was a decoration, so we scaled everything down at that point and sent some of the trucks back,” Paxton recalled. “It seemed like a really odd place for a plane crash, but obviously we have to follow up on all calls, so we checked it out very quickly and immediately were able to confirm it was a decoration. It ended as quickly as it began,” he said.
“Anybody with any sense… in daylight there they can see what kind of shape it’s in,” Holsinger told local Columbus, Ohio, station WSYX. “It wouldn’t lay there for all the meat to fall off his frame. They come through here 70 miles an hour, so they don’t have much time to check it out.”
Retired from the Air National Guard, Holsinger has amassed a couple of ultralights, and he wanted to do something with this one for Halloween. His son-in-law helped him set it up in the tree.
Army veteran Delbert Holsinger said he has been storing the aircraft in a trailer for years and decided to have some fun with it. https://t.co/f481pYXbeT
— WGXA (@WGXAnews) October 16, 2018
Holsinger’s neighbors said it’s common for people to do a double-take when walking down their block these days. “It’s funny too. It’s usually in the back, and when we drove by it we were like why is it out there? And then we saw the skeleton in it,” 12-year-old Jake Johnson told WSYX.
It’s not the first time Paxton has heard of Halloween decorations causing concern. “Once a fake car crash created some panic, especially at night,” he recalled. “You have to be kind of judicious with what you’re setting up out there as a decoration because someone might see it as something much more significant than what you are trying to portray.”
Holsinger had good intentions when setting up his Halloween decorations – which also include a dinosaur skeleton in the woods behind his house. “They want to forget their concerns and things like that and then let people laugh and have a good time.”
Paxton can’t help but give Holsinger credit for the spooky display. “It was a good decoration,” he admitted.
While this story has a happy ending, the actual story behind this plane does not. Holsinger told WSYX “the guy who designed this aircraft here got killed demonstrating it for sale.”
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