CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Travis Dove set out the supplies he’d need — garden stakes, ties, towels and chairs — in his front yard. But he prepared the stars of his Halloween show in the privacy of his home.

There, he dressed his $38 skeletons in a mix of his clothes, secondhand clothes or costumes purchased online.

Once the day’s light began to fade, he carried them outside and began assembling his tableaus under the cover of darkness. A little after 2 a.m. and around 12 hours of work later, his masterpiece was complete.

This October, his modest front yard features a skeleton in a yellow jacket holding a fishing rod next to a skeleton mermaid. There’s also a skeleton on a beach towel, holding another skeleton in the air with its feet. Elsewhere in the yard, a gray-haired skeleton in a blue Navy sweatshirt sits in a chair, next to a skeleton posing as a reporter with a microphone.

Behind them, in the bushes, a skeleton in a gray Navy sweatshirt lurks. And near a door, there’s a shirtless skeleton leaving the house — bag over shoulder and thermos in hand.

The offseason stories and social media posts of first-year North Carolina coach Bill Belichick and his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, inspired this year’s elaborate Halloween display.

Dove, a freelance photographer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic and Rolling Stone, is a Wake Forest graduate. His wife, Kerry, a pediatric dentist, is a Duke alumna.

Naturally, taking aim at UNC football suited them.

Dove doesn’t have much of a social media presence. He doesn’t spend a ton of time online. But five years ago, he started using skeletons to replicate pop culture portrayals for his Halloween decorations outside his home in the Plaza Midwood neighborhood of Charlotte, N.C.

Some years, the inspiration is more difficult than others. This year, it was easy, especially with Belichick and Hudson creating headlines in his first year coaching the team.

“It’s been fun to watch this dumpster fire,” he said.

Travis Dove has been building pop culture Halloween displays since October 2020, including previous iterations on the Paris Olympics and Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. (David Ubben / The Athletic)

In March, Hudson posted photos from Jupiter Beach in Florida of Belichick hoisting her lower body with his feet and holding her hands to support her upper body.

She accompanied the post with a #Billates hashtag.

Football fans have seen Belichick, who won six Super Bowls as head coach of the New England Patriots, huff at reporters and offer non-answers to their questions. They’d seen him mutter into a headset while wearing a cutoff hoodie.

No one had ever seen the now 73-year-old doing yoga and pilates on the beach with his 24-year-old girlfriend.

“The minute I saw the yoga pose picture, I said, ‘We’re doing this.’ I don’t even care if people have forgotten about it. I’m going to remind them,” said Travis Dove. “Because it was so out of character and so bizarre to see him behaving that way.”

The second scene replicates Belichick’s April interview with “CBS Sunday Morning,” when Hudson interjected during a question about how the couple met. Skeleton Belichick sits in a chair — complete with a Navy sweatshirt full of holes — alongside a reporter with a custom “CBS Sunday Morning” mic flag. Skeleton Hudson is hiding on the ground in the bushes nearby, sunglasses perched atop her head as they were in the viral offseason moment.

Bill Belichick, second in all-time NFL wins and a six-time Super Bowl champion, talks with “CBS Mornings” Tony Dokoupil about his father’s advice, Tom Brady, and his new book, “The Art of Winning.” https://t.co/SsQxUwmape pic.twitter.com/kSAt2pLKcq

— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) April 27, 2025

For the third, Dove purchased a yellow jacket like the one Belichick donned in Hudson’s post for Halloween 2024, when they posed on a beach as a fisherman and a mermaid. It only cost him $5 on eBay.

“I couldn’t believe how similar it was to the one he was actually wearing,” Dove said.

He slipped it on the skeleton along with a straw hat, pipe and some boots he had in his garage. In the skeleton’s right hand is a fishing pole connected to a skeleton on the ground with a mermaid skirt, seashell bra and long brown wig.

As for the yoga pose — his personal favorite and the most difficult to assemble — they found a red, white and blue towel, like the one in the photo. He also searched online and bought a one-piece white swimsuit close to what Hudson had on for the shoot.

He also bought some over-the-ear headphones for the skeleton, but they never made it on.

“They look exactly like my son’s headphones he’s supposed to bring to kindergarten, so they ended up in his backpack somehow and they’re in his kindergarten classroom somewhere,” he said. “I haven’t seen them since.”

Kerry is usually a minimal participant. That changed this year.

“I knew I had to have my wife’s help putting the yoga pose together,” Dove said.

It’s not very sturdy, held up by garden stakes tied to the skeletons to hold them in place. Dove’s always concerned he’s going to wake up to a jumbled pile of bones in his yard.

Travis Dove estimated it was a 12-hour process to dress and stage his Halloween yard display. (David Ubben / The Athletic)

After his initial trio of scenes, he recently added a fourth, delayed by the late arrival of an additional skeleton. It depicts a shirtless Belichick in jeans with a leather satchel, coffee thermos and mussed hair, as captured on a Ring camera in 2024. The jeans are Dove’s.

Over six years, Dove estimates he’s spent around $500-$700 on decorations.

In October 2020, Dove had spent most of the past six months in his house. With Halloween approaching, he bought a pair of skeletons and set them as decorations in his front yard. A tradition was born.

He slapped a flower crown and leopard blouse on one — complete with a surgical mask. Another had a bleached mullet with a Fu Manchu mustache and a bottle of hand sanitizer.

“Carole Maskin” and “The Sani-Tiger King” signs sat at their feet.

The statement was simple.

“I’m bored,” Dove said.

Five years later, they’re still at it.

He’s up to eight skeletons now, giving him plenty of flexibility to stretch his creative legs.

In 2021, he capitalized on a local legend and duplicated a famous photo of Mick Jagger outside local watering hole The Thirsty Beaver, where he made a legendary unannounced cameo before a show in town. The next year, he put then-Panthers coach Matt Rhule and owner David Tepper as proprietors of a quarterback graveyard, complete with Teddy Bridgewater’s two gloves emerging from the ground.

Two years ago, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and pop star Taylor Swift embraced near the graveyard of Swift’s ex-boyfriends, and last year, he memorialized moments from the Paris Olympics, highlighted by everyone’s favorite Australian breakdancer, Raygun.

The Dove household display at Halloween 2023 commemorated Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. (Courtesy of Travis Dove)

The gags are mostly for neighborhood consumption. But he’ll send a few photos to a friend at Charlotte Magazine.

This year, the display went viral after the magazine’s social media accounts posted a video.

Belichick’s football team lost its first three games against Power 4 opponents by 34, 25 and 28 points. Last week, it nearly beat Cal on the road but lost 21-18 after receiver Nathan Leacock fumbled at the 1-yard line with 3:48 to play, dropping the Tar Heels to 2-4.

UNC’s on-field struggles meant the situation was ripe for punchlines — and Dove’s hit.

“You’re famous now,” read one text Dove received.

He could only laugh.

“I have many friends who went to UNC,” Dove said. “Some of them I know did not support this hire, and for those people it must feel like they were swindled into the Fyre Festival and now they have to wear the merch around.

“For their sakes, I do hope the program figures it out, eventually. But it’s not like there was no hype train before this all transpired, and when a rival team lands some egg on its face, it’s not your job to clean it up for them.”