A Homer, Alaska photographer turned storm-tossed bull kelp into lighted Halloween faces that age into shrunken-head lookalikes in days, leaving friends baffled at first glance.
Tim Hatfield, a photographer and digital creator who lives in Homer, Alaska, collected bull kelp that washed ashore after a big storm and shaped the remains into glowing Halloween decorations he calls kelp-o’-lanterns.
He added lights, carved eerie faces, and fashioned one piece into an eyeball. This year the display sits at his house atop a hill, where trick-or-treaters would have to hike up to see it.
Popular Science reported that Hatfield was walking a beach with his girlfriend in 2025 when they noticed the kelp. She pointed out that one piece looked like a face and said she had seen the seaweed used as Halloween décor before. He decided to try it himself.
After the storm, he went back, brought the kelp home, and got to work. Bull kelp grows along the coast of North America, and weathered pieces wash up ready-made for the kind of DIY project that skips the big-box aisle full of plastic skeletons and prefab props.
Last year Hatfield set the kelp-o’-lanterns up at his girlfriend’s house in town. Friends did a double take.
Hatfield told Popular Science what the reaction sounded like.
“[Last year] we had a few friends who were just like, ‘What is going on here?’ Because there’s no way your mind’s going to understand what they’re made of at first, when you first see them,”
This year he skipped the fresher stock and went straight for kelp that already looked beaten up by the sea.
“Then this year I kind of already went for the ones that looked weathered.”
The lineup includes a one-eyed ghoul with a spider-looking thing sticking out of its mouth and a noose around its neck, plus a head with two seemingly blood-stained tongues. No 12-foot store-bought skeleton required.
The real punch line is the aging. Hatfield says the change is fast.
“The coolest thing about the kelp-o’-lanterns is that as they age, and it only takes a few days, they look creepier and almost look like real shrunken heads,”
They only get worse, or better, depending on your taste for the macabre, the closer Halloween gets. He is already treating the whole thing as a habit.
“It is safe to say this is probably an annual tradition.”
Hatfield’s project is simple: walk the shore, haul what the tide gives you, shape it, light it, and let time finish the scare. No committee, no corporate costume line, no imported foam molded in a factory overseas. Just a photographer, a girlfriend with a sharp eye, a storm, and free material the Pacific left on the sand.
Neighbors who first saw the display at the house in town could not place the material. That confusion is the point. The kelp does not advertise itself. It just sits there looking wrong in the best Halloween way, then darkens and shrinks into something closer to a trophy from a bad dream.
In a season crowded with the same giant skeletons and LED inflatables on every block, a hilltop row of actual ocean leftovers still manages to stop people cold. Common sense creativity still works when someone bothers to look down at the beach instead of the shopping cart.
