The sight itself is spooky and beyond kooky: A bloody-faced, coverall-clad skeleton suspended in midair on a post jutting from the rear of a pickup truck.
The other day it was parked outside a Home Depot in west Macon.
Forget for a moment that this freakish, metal-boned creature is also perched on a toilet seat. A toilet seat, mind you, that is painted red.
The tailgate contraption, its skull sporting a baseball cap with “Backwoods Moonshine” printed above its bill, looks like a prop for a haunted house.
The creepy creation’s maker is a former welder named Jason Stiner, who crafted it using pipes and auto parts.
About a decade ago, his boss at the time kidded that Stiner would never go so far as to mount a life-size, skeleton-man dummy to his truck.
“He went out on a job,” Stiner, 49, says, “and when he come back, I had it halfway built.”
At first, Stiner attached the monster, which his child has named “Skelly-Skel,” to the front of his truck. It rode just high enough not to obstruct Stiner’s view.
Later, he stuck the beast on back, where each October it dangles, no doubt shocking other motorists in the weeks leading up to Halloween.
So far, Stiner hasn’t been pulled over, but his contraption has attracted the attention of police.
“A couple of years ago, I went into Walmart and when I came out there was three cop cars by it,” he says. “I said, ‘Hey, I’m legit.’ They said, ‘Nah, we just want to take some pictures.’”
And so it goes, pretty much everywhere he stops, heads turn and minds wonder, “What in the heck?”
“He’ll get your attention,” Stiner says.
As will the fact that the truck-bed bogeyman rests his rump on a hot-red toilet seat.
Why, you may wonder, is he mounted to such a lowly throne?
Think about it. Consider his precarious perch.
Oh, crap!
“You know,” Stiner says, “I mean, what would you think if you was riding on the back of it?”
This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with The Telegraph.
