OVERALL
I am creative, and have an engineering head. These two factors feed my ability to do things like: build/fix things around the house, and also build interesting (but silly) creative things – like Halloween decorations.
When I plan for Halloween, I can envision some interesting end results, but one overlay (because I am a thorough thinker) is to ensure that whatever I build can be easily and compactly stored – so it doesn’t take up a lot of space between Halloweens. My creations all store compactly in my garage. (I see houses in my neighborhood that have so many Christmas decorations that they must: Rent the decorations? Rent a storage facility? Fill their entire garage most of the year?)
HAUNTED HOUSE
Overall
Years ago, I used to do a haunted house in my garage. The entire neighborhood loved it. It was a maze (dark, with scary music playing) with a dozen stops along the way. The maze was framed with PVC pipes, with black plastic hanging down as walls.
Items
Some of the interesting stops in the maze were: an alien baby incubator (an aquarium with mirrored sides giving the impression of an infinite number of babies), Dracula, Frankenstein (with his heart and brain uninstalled), a ghost, a scary clown, mutilated dolls (my daughter’s idea), etc.
Scary (Fake) Hole
But the most interesting one was my ‘Well of Lost Souls’ — which was two mirrors facing each other (one mirror on the floor, and one mirror on the ceiling) in a column with a string of (Christmas) lights between them. When two mirrors face each other, they reflect back and forth, and show what seems to be an infinite hole (if one mirror is on the floor). I put an (unnecessary) protective chain in front of the floor mirror, which gave people the impression that the ‘hole’ was real. This used to freak out kids (and many adults, who thought it was a real hole), plus my dog. If you put your head above the floor mirror, you see yourself — which is a bit scary. I had a sign next to it saying: ‘Woe to those that see their souls in the well!”
Here’s a link to a video of my in-garage haunted house (10 minute video). The fake hole is about 7 minutes into the 10 minute video.
HOUSE DECOR
Here is a recent picture of my 2023 decorated house: elaborate house decorations. I combined my complex annual decorations with my minimal ’jack-o-lantern face’ decor I used during covid – when there were no trick-or-treaters. The other contributing source are the items I used in my in-garage haunted house — which I don’t do anymore.
Lots of cool stuff — the big spider was sometimes on the roof, and sometimes in the front yard. (It was interesting/challenging to have built a large spider that can stand on its own legs.) The kids helped me choose the words on the gravestones.
At the front door, something descends onto the heads of tricker-treaters — sometimes a spider, sometimes a bat. I attach a hard-to-see fishing line to the door, elbow it inside, and have it hold the descending item higher up. When the door opens, the fishing line advances, and the (scary) item descends. Two interesting stories: (1) our shy indoor cat Olive is fascinated by the string — so we put a chair inside near it so she can frequently check it out; (2) we recently had a young trick-or-treater (6? 7? years old) fully understand how it works — he said ‘so you have a string that connects indoors and advances to make the thing descend’. He must have an ‘engineering head’ like mine.
DINOSAUR
One crazy thing I created was a 12-foot dinosaur costume. It took me maybe a week to create it, but the result was quite cool. The head pivots, the mouth opens, and it can walk (with me inside). One interesting characteristic is — it’s a bit heavy. I built it before they started selling inflatable dinosaur costumes…
NOW
Unfortunately, I don’t do my Halloween decorations anymore. Two reasons: (1) my wife has a friend whose husband died falling off a ladder, (2) I’ve been diagnosed with ALS, which makes me significantly less capable. I plan to pass my decorations down to my kids — mostly my oldest who owns a house.