I plan to show you ways of enhancing your own graveyard. Below are photos of my graveyard, and I'll be discussing how I came up with these ideas. It doesn't take much to make a good graveyard. If you look at the photo below you probably spotted the giant spider with its body. Below the spider are the tombstones that I use to make a graveyard. I use the word graveyard to describe what you do on the exterior of your house. I will only talk about how to decorate the exterior of your house. Interior is discussed under haunted.
Exterior can be tricky depending on how your house is laid out. In the apartment you might only have the balcony to put your decorations on. With your house you have a whole front yard. This is where the fun starts; now we can start acting like a kid again. A good way to start doing this is to take on your own fears and enhance them in your yard. Because you know what makes you scared, use it to make other people scared. Look at the photos, and the comment I put next to them. Enjoy and have fun.
This photo was taking on the night of Halloween 2008. This shows how lighting can infect the look of your project. Making it better or worse be careful on how you use your lighting.
Look at the graveyard scene; you can see the hand reaching out of the ground. I used a prop hand with some PVC pipe to make it into an arm, and an old sleeve from an outfit. It’s the little touches that spook people. They don't see it to begin with, but when they look closer and they spot it. And from all the horror movies we have seen we get a shot of fear. The bones add to the look of an old graveyard that has been abandon.
Here is a simple coffin that I made from 1 by 4 board. It doesn't take that much time, but it gives you so many different options.
You can have someone inside who popped out to scare people. Or a fog machine inside set on a timer or to a motion detector. The lid could lift up to show a body inside, like a burned body. You could put a CD player with speakers and record your own horror sounds. Like a man calling for help with the sound of rats. Lights inside could go on and off to the music.
One night I went out with some string and made a spider web. You might look at spider webs from books to get an idea of how to do this. I used a ladder to get to the peak of the roof which had a hook there. I strung the string from my Windows to the peak of the roof to the other window. Then to the ground, and then I started running strings up and down across. Then you run other strings in between.
I had a skeleton on hand, and I put some clothes on the skeleton then I wrapped it in imitation spider web. Then I hung it from the hook. After that I put the giant spider on top.
You might be asking where I got a Werewolf.
The Werewolf was made by putting together a PVC pipe body frame. Unto which I put some foam (you can look for old sofa for the foam) to fill out the body and then dressed him up with some clothes. You should use long-sleeved shirts when you do this. This covered up the tape that I used to put the hands on. Keeping him in place was easy I used a vent pipe to tie his leg to.The old fence is not that hard to do in a weekend
The fence was made of 1 by 2 wood from Home Depot and PVC pipe. Using 2 foot long Rebar to anchor them to the ground, I hammered the Rebar into the ground and put them on top of the Rebar. More information is in how to.
This shows the difference of what it looks like at night without a flash.
Death at the door.
This one is interesting, because the head moves from side to side. When people walk up they don't notice it at first, but then someone will notice that the head is moving and will jump back.
The photo were taking about Halloween 2009.
You can see an alien who has just landed on my roof. This is one of the aliens that has no back. I use one of the vent pipes from my roof to put a PPC pipe in to hold him up. Then I added 2 ½ yards of fabric and some safety pins for his costume.
Here you can see in during the day. Some of the people were startled when they spotted him on my roof during the daylight. By putting one and two surprises on my roof you can get a scare out of it. Most people don’t look out so when one person spots it and tell there but he else it can be startling.
Here is a shot of the left side of my house at night. Watch out for the clown, he is in a bad mood.
Here is a close-up shot of the clown during the day. Sitting on a big crate of TNT, so no smoking.
You can see my singing pumpkins with their new friends. It is a good thing that buzzards don’t like pumpkins, or they might be for dinner.
This one is picked clean, so buzzards try somewhere else. With this set up I used a skeleton torso to start with. Then I put a shirt on it’s with a good. And I tied a hangman’s noose.
Just a little toxic waste in the graveyard nobody will notice except the dead.
Here’s a shot of the right side of my house.
This photo was taken during the daylight hours, so all the monsters were asleep. Bugs kill the grass during the summer. So I decided to dig a grave and put last year’s coffin and it. Inside the coffin I’d would a full skeleton and dressed him up like a cowboy.
This wolf is out for the full moon.
They shot is of the Wolf during the day. Some people thought that it was someone in a costume. Instead it is a pvc pipe frame onto which I put foam rubber on it, then the clothes.
Here is a good photo of my front yard. You can see that I used the fence to hang my web site address.
You can see how I used bones and around the tombstones to enhance the graveyard effect.
This photo was taken when I was just starting to set up for Halloween.
