When decorating your house for Halloween, you can go beyond the typical decorations and instead opt to give your house an overall theme. Keep in mind that some of these scenarios may not be appropriate for very young trick or treaters. Here are a few to consider:
Famous Horror Movie Characters Decor Ideas
Find costumes of famous slasher movie characters, like Jason from Friday the 13th, Freddy Kruger from a Nightmare on Elm Street, Ghostface from the Scream movies, and so forth. Stuff the costume with clothing or towels to make it look life-like and then place it on a long wooden stake in the ground. Use wire hangers in the sleeves so you can position the arms in a frightening manner. Have a few of them lined up along your pathway or back lit in windows. An alternative, is to carve the faces of these scary characters into a series of pumpkins.
Witches Brew
Take three witch's costumes, and stuff and stake them as with the slasher costumes above. Position them around a large black pot in your front yard. Place an inexpensive bubble machine in the pot (usually under $20). Put large sticks in the witches’ hands making it look like they are stirring the witches’ brew. If you can find a recording of witches laughing, have that playing as well.
Halloween Creature House
Pick a theme of gargoyles, spiders, or bats. Get several of all shapes and sizes and place them all over the exterior of your house. You can have them perched over the top of the door, hanging from gutters and tree branches, on the roof, on stairs, lamp posts, pathways and the front door. Place outdoor spot lights on them to make them appear even scarier. If you can have the spot lights on a motion sensor, so that they turn on when people walk by, even better.
Crime Scene Outdoor Halloween Decoration
Recreate a crime scene by lining your walkway with police tape, drawing chalk outlines on your driveway, playing a tape of screams, even have a fake body lying under a white sheet. A bloody door cover will also add to the effect.
Haunted Mansion Halloween Decor
You can create the illusion of a haunted house quite easily. Thunder probes are inexpensive devices (around $25) that mimic the sound of thunder with flashes of lightening. You could also have a CD of organ music playing, cob webs all over the exterior of your house, ghosts in window, and fake rats by the front door. To find these products on the web, be sure to see Scary Indoor and Outdoor Halloween Decorations.
Spooky Halloween Window Scenes
If you want something more elaborate and have several front facing windows, consider a classic horror film image in each. For example, you will find a lot of Halloween stores are selling blood covered shower curtains. So you could recreate the shower scene from the movie Psycho in one window with cardboard cutouts of the two characters back lit behind the curtain.
Whether it is scary window decorations or famous Halloween movie characters, all of these outdoor decorating ideas will make your house the most frightening on the block.
More of Gail's Halloween Articles:
- Pumpkin Carving Stencils, Patterns and Ideas
- Spooky Outdoor Halloween Party Games for Kids
- Fun Indoor Halloween Party Games for Kids
- Scary Indoor and Outdoor Halloween Decorations
Gail Oliver - Gail is an author, writer and researcher. She has been quoted in magazines as diverse as Cosmopolitan and Maclean's. Gail writes on a ...
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