29. Make San Quentin Man! San Quentin Man is simply a plastic skeleton or stuffed body wound all around with tiny lights that tie him to a chair. Our SQM is wound with purple lights and has a wire headband with coils of heavy wire attached, that lead to the outside electrical switchbox of our house. The switchbox is covered with a cardboard box painted black that has appropriate signs on it, like "500,000 Volts," and "San Quentin Correctional Facility." When we correct 'em, they stay corrected!
28. Make the Dead Head! Get a gallon jar with a lid and remove the contents and label. Make jello in any color (or better yet, make several types of jello, plus a jello brain in a plastic brain mold). Put a thick layer of jello (or the brain) in the bottom of the jar. Then put in two boiled-egg halves about an inch apart, with the yolk sides touching the glass. Add more jello, any color. Add some string or cooked spaghetti or other noodles. Put in two rows of about 10 tiny marshmallows, touching the glass (teeth, of course). Fill the jar with more jello, perhaps adding some gummy worms or any other delight that takes your fancy. Place the jar in the refrigerator overnight. Then screw the lid on tightly and turn the jar upside down. Yeccchhh! A bottled head! This makes a horrific party centerpiece, and is also edible!
27. There's no body like an almost instant "dead body"! Use last year's Halloween mask and stuff it with crumpled bags or newspaper. Take some of your own clothing, stuff it as well, safety-pin the pants or skirt part to the shirt or blouse part, and sprawl the new body on the ground in some strategic place. A wig is good here, if the mask has no hair of its own. No time to make or add hands? Stuff the sleeves into the pants pockets, or tuck their cuffs under the "body." A pair of old shoes finishes off the look. For that demonic touch, add some drops of "blood." A fat squirt of ketchup will do if you are in a hurry!
26. Hang a very lightweight, large plastic bag (like the ones you get at the dry cleaner's) from a string or tree branch in a dark area of your yard. The wind will ruffle the plastic, making strange sounds.
25. Make some blood(see how on one of the How to Haunt pages on this site). Pour it out onto a plate and press your hand into it. Now you are ready to put bloody handprints on your shower curtain or shower glass enclosure, and on your car or house windows. How about a bloody handprint on the outside of the microwave's window, or on the fridge?!
24. Fast and out of this world! Buy a hollow ceramic skull. Get one of those red LED flasher lights that you use on your bike at night. Set the flasher on random and put it inside the skull. The red light strobes out the eyes and looks just gorgeous -- and it will go for DAYS on its battery.
23. Have any outdoor plant stands? Uncialle has several tripod-based metal plant stands. Since it's getting past time for patio plants to be at their best, Uncialle uses the plant stands as bases for jack o'lanterns. The jack o' lanterns look extra spooky lifted a couple of feet off the ground. This is a great way to frame an entrance.
22. Use your computer printer to print out a gobblin' MENU to post in the kitchen, a list of imaginary or real treats for your Halloween guests, such as scrambled brains, toad in the hole, devil's food cake, and blood pudding.
21. Got a skeleton, don't know where to put her, and are running out of time? Take a tip from Snow White's evil queen. Sprawl the skelly on the floor with a hand outstretched to a pitcher that you place just out of reach.
20. The DEAD make great drivers! Back your car(s)into your driveway and insert a stuffed body with skull or mask head into the driver's seat. Bendable bony hands grasping the wheel are an easy last touch. Gramps wears my own grandfather's suit and hat, and he sits in his white 1960 Scout that we now use to plow the snow. The Dead Dudette drives her 1948 truck with demonic concentration (to see her page, follow the Halloween Image Page links at the bottoms of the pages).
18. Tie a Halloween mask to a tree trunk at head-height. Snap a chemlight glow stick and tape inside the eyeholes. Do several. Eerie, safe, and fast!
18. Seat a plastic skeleton at your computer. Drape some stretchy artificial cobweb over the skelly. Gee, some web pages sure take a long time to load!
17. Play a tape of a thunderstorm. Instant atmosphere!
15. Buy a length of black cloth to use each year as a Halloween tablecloth. Scatter it with bright autumn leaves.
13. Place a string of garlic on each side of your front door (tack to wall or hang from porchlights), with a small sign, "Vampires Begone!"
12. Get some of those squishy hookless plastic bass-fishing worms and put them in your kitchen and bathroom soap dishes with the soap. The little crawdads and octopi are just as creepy.
11. Put up a spooky floating message on your computer screensaver, or do a slide show of Halloween images and let it run.
10. Hollow out a head of purple cabbage to use as a cauldron for serving chip dip.
9. Hang small plastic spiders from thin black threads, and tape the ends of the threads to the tops of door moldings. Hang the spidys at face-height, of course. This also works well with wet strings or yarn.
8. Replace porchlight lightbulbs with green ones. It looks alien, but there will still be enough light for your visitors.
7. Use one of those motion-detector "ribbit" frogs to guard your pathway. Make sure you have a light source opposite him, so that he will work in the dark. I dislike the green-plastic paint jobs on these, so have painted mine more like real frogs or toads. A black one is nearly invisible in the dark. A croak from one of Uncialle's repainted ribbit frogs made a tough old Army sergeant do a nice involuntary jump off Stronghold's spiral stairs, so take care where you place them.
6. Putting a votive candle in your jack o'lantern? Place the candle in a bathroom-sized Dixie cup. The candle will burn two to four times as long, will be more resistant to blowing out, and you'll never have wax spills.
5. On Halloween night, tape down all your light switches and unplug your lamps. Fire in darkness is the essence of Halloween. Create spooky atmosphere by using candles and lanterns only (except in the bathroom).
4. Elections are coming up. Who is your favorite candidate for coroner? Get some nice "Moriarty for Coroner" signs for your yard and save them for Halloween. This year Uncialle's favorite candidate has a body outline on her signs!
3. Make monster footprints up your sidewalk to your door with colored chalk. Children love to do this. One way to draw footprints is for them to take giant steps, drawing outlines of their own feet as they go, and then adding huge toes and claws. Try glow-in-the-dark chalk!
2. Spiderweb stuff is great for instant eerie atmosphere. Take pins and stretch the material across your windows in very thin irregular swags that are quite tight. To avoid pinholes in your walls, stick the pins in exactly between the wall and the window molding. (Careful--don't do this on low windows if you have little ones.) Be sure to put a dim light inside, so trick-or-treaters can see the cobwebs from outside. Try some on your bathroom and bedroom mirrors! --And don't forget to place some fat, wicked plastic spiders in the webs!
1. More spiderweb-stuff tips: Using push-pins, tack streamers of spiderweb stuff under the eaves of your house outside, where they can wave spookily in the breeze. With thread, tie a few streamers of spider stuff to a branch that's easily visible from your porch. Any masked critter looks more awful with a veil of spiderwebs drawn across its face and tied with thread at the throat (but don't do this if there's a real person inside the mask trying to see out--visibility inside many masks is poor to begin with).
16.Using lipstick, write a ghostly backwards message on a mirror.
14. Ravens (plastic crow decoys, available from Cabela's outdoor catalogue) are inexpensive, nearly indistructible, and look spectacular in a graveyard, on a fence, or atop gateposts. (See Uncialle's Solstice Page.) A raven topper for a Halloween totem sign (see the How to Haunt Page behind the Eye Demon Page), is quite spooky.
Watch this page for more and more and MORE
tips!
How to Haunt: Crafting Halloween
Strange Things of the Universe
Uncialle's Images of Halloween