Halloween already? Home/yard haunt ideas?

wackychimp

wackychimp

Sr Member
We've recently moved and for some reason last night I got this urge to start planning Halloween yard decorations. Looking to do a graveyard scene.

Already have:
2 foggers
1 fog chiller
2 wireless speakers with MP3 player looping scary sounds
1 skeleton digging out of a grave

Want:
Toombstones
Lots of skulls (30+)
Easy fog distribution into yard


Questions:
  1. where to get or how to make cheap skulls?
  2. where to get or how to make cheap gravestones?
  3. Good webbing that's NOT permanent doesn't leave residue? (IMHO the cotton stuff is too fake.)
I've been digging a little (no pun intended) and have found lots of skulls I can buy but wondered about casting a bunch - maybe 30 or so just to have strewn about the yard. Thinking this is ultra cheap way to go. They don't have to be perfect, they just need to look spooky from 10 feet away. Also don't want to have to worry too much when neighborhood kids steal some. Thoughts?

(Wife will put up with all of this for about the week before Halloween but, it's coming down ASAP after Nov 1. :lol )

As always any decorations should be: cheap + high quality + easy (I know... pick 2).

Let's talk Halloween! :D
 
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Well, tombstones could easily be done from hi-density foam. Even makes carving names into them pretty easy. But you may want to talk to Rich (rileyreplicas) about all the ins and out of working with foam.

The skulls could be done a few different ways I guess. You could make a mold and then slush cast skulls to your hearts content. Air holes aren't a big deal, so you don't have to be precise. If you could find a way to make a few molds and then use expanding foam to fill them, that could be good too. They'd be realtively cheap and lightweight, but I don't know how long it would take to make each one as the foam usually takes about a day to dry.

Just some (probably bad) ideas.

-Fred
 
I'd make a mold and pour them in plaster - you can get a big bag of Hydrocal for cheap, at Home Depot.
 
Cardbard painted works even in the rain for a couple nights.
We did Snoopy shot down in the pumpkin patch this past year. About a 60 pumkins of different sizes were strew about the front yard. Made a snoopy dog house out of a large cardboard house, painted it up and added those car bullet hole stickers to it. Added a fog machine inside to make it smoke after being shot down. Got a lighted Snoopy by Linus display to add to it. Added a few other halloween decorations and it looked darn super. Everyone in the neighborhood liked it. Parents, young kids, just looked great. :)
 
For skulls, I bought a plastic skull, covered it in aluminum foil. Covered that in paper mache except for the bottom. Then cut up the back through the foil and the paper mache until it would slide off. Another couple pieces to repair the slice, and I had a skull. Some white paint, some black paint, and some used tea bags for weathering and it looked quite good from a distance. I just did that several times for multiple skulls. I even made a strand of skulls on twine painted festively with red, yellow, and green paint for Day of the Dead.
 
Ghostride.com sells a cobweb gun, I actually built my own...it's a glue gun you hook up to an air compressor it works great.
Headstones like it says above 2" pink foam from the home depot...
I did a home haunt for 14 years...had like 8-10 rooms throughout the yard/shed/garage. Now I run a real one.
mike
 
I don't know this guy, but these are the most amazing Halloween decorations I have ever seen:

http://pumpkinrot.com/index2.htm

I have this site bookmarked and I consistently check the "brewing" section. I can't wait to see what happens this Halloween.

A MUST SEE!!!
 
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I'm glad I'm not the only one already thinking about Halloween.

The different kinds of foam already discussed would work great for tombstones. You can purchase spray paint from craft stores that look like marble or stone. They also sell some very realistic looking moss if you wanted to add that to the stones for effect.

For the skulls, drifters with no ties are an excellent source of skulls and bones.

For spiderwebs, I would just get a bunch of black widows and let them spin webs in your yard. It'll really scare the heck out of people if they knew that they could actually be bit by a poisonous spider any second. Don't worry about cleaning them up. Once it gets cold, they'll probably just move into your basement.
 
Last year I used a couple of sheets of thin plywood. Cut out 20-25 or so grave markers in a view different shapes. Slapped on some grey paint, misted them with black spray paint and then used a jumbo fat magic marker to write the sayings, ala Disney Haunted Mansion.
Lit them with colored flood lights. They came out pretty good. I plan on adding to it this year.
I tried one of those cheap fog units from target but the thing burned up before the evening was over.:lol

Steven
 
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howlingwind13 said:
Ghostride.com sells a cobweb gun, I actually built my own...it's a glue gun you hook up to an air compressor it works great.
Headstones like it says above 2" pink foam from the home depot...
I did a home haunt for 14 years...had like 8-10 rooms throughout the yard/shed/garage. Now I run a real one.
mike
Click to expand...


I've seen the glue gun webbers but am not sure I want that on the eves of my house. Does it come off easily?
 
Maybe try shooting it on wax paper. I would think when it dries you could peel it off and drape it over anything you want.

Pat
 
wackychimp said:
Really? Doesn't pull paint or anything?

Do they use "regular" glue sticks or something else?
Click to expand...


It comes out really thin like real webs...no big globs of glue where you would have that peeling of the paint...it's real fine threads.
They also have cobwebs in a can for inside stuff. That's really cool. Check out the website I think there is a video of them using the stuff.
ghostride.com
mike
 
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