Ready to take Halloween to the next level? We have advice — and photos — from extreme decorators
Attracting trick-or-treaters is no longer a problem. Rose says her ghoulish adornments have given neighbors something to bond over: “We are very much a tightknit community that now comes together simply because of Halloween.” Indeed, the social benefits of all this All Hallows’ fun are surely one reason Americans are projected to spend more than $3 billion decorating this year, according to the National Retail Federation.
If you’re ready to freak out (but also delight) your neighbors, heed this haunted advice from Halloween super fans.
Professional haunted attractions often lead you through a series of vignettes — for instance, an alien encounter followed by an eerie circus, which leads to an undead Viking feast. While you can certainly take a similar approach at home, many aficionados recommend picking one theme to guide you.
Colleen Delawder, who has lived in and decorated the Historic Herndon Halloween House in Herndon, Va., since 2005, says themes make decorating both easier and more fun. Getting her own house ready for the big day typically begins on Labor Day.
This year, she’s basing her motif on the movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” which means she’ll get to use her Christmas decorations, too. Previous Halloweens have featured clowns and haunted pirates (which is why she still includes a pirate ship: “We have it, so why not use it?”).
Delawder also suggests incorporating your hobbies, which can save money. If you’re into kayaking, for instance, put out your kayak and throw some skeletons in it.
Rose changes her theme annually, too, generally taking anywhere from 1 to 3 months to put it all together (though her longest setup took more than a year). This year, she drew inspiration from the late Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński, whose surrealist work often depicted his nightmares (who says Halloween can’t be high brow?). “We want [people] to feel like they have either entered into another world or they are viewing the portal to another world,” says Rose.
Paul Brubacher, director of operations at Markoff’s Haunted Forest, an annual attraction in Dickerson, Md., says his team’s ideas tend to come from “our own things that creep us out and what we get the shivers about.” Inspiration also often strikes unexpectedly, for example, while shopping at Home Depot: “I’ll just see something in the plumbing aisle and go, ‘Oh wow, that right there looks like an interesting fitting. I could probably use a little paint … maybe put a little latex on it, and I could make that into an alien feeding tube.’ ”
Don’t traumatize the neighbors
While commercial attractions like Markoff’s are designed to scare you silly, you should probably avoid serious horror at home, especially if you have younger kids around.
To delight rather than traumatize, Brubacher suggests focusing on atmosphere over blood and guts. “There’s scary, and then there’s just gross, right? If I’m looking at a pile of dismembered bodies, I’m not scared, I’m disgusted.” He recommends fog machines and eerie lighting for building mystery, no gore required.
Still, if you had your heart set on dismembered body parts, there are ways to be playful about including them, says Delawder. A recurring feature at her Historic Herndon Halloween House is a haunted grill, which has faux parts over the flame. “But it’s not disgusting in any way. It just kind of looks fun and whimsical,” she says.
Indeed, across-the-board, realistic blood and guts were seen as a no-no. So, too, were realistic references: The expert decorators we talked to cautioned against featuring anything too topical. “We’re not touching on subjects that could be touchy for other people or potentially disrespectful of someone’s belief systems,” says Rose.
Get scary-good deals on supplies
As with most holiday goodies, the least-expensive time to shop for Halloween decorations is right after the unholy day, when you’ll find items on clearance. But that’s not the only strategy for scoring bargains.
Nature can be a great (and free) source: “The more organic elements you can bring in, the more convincing your atmosphere becomes,” says Rose, who collects tree limbs, sticks and leaves for her graveyard setup and other macabre displays. “There is nothing more fall and Halloween than the sound of crunching leaves under your feet.”
Halloween is also a recycling opportunity. Francisco Santos, operations director at The Horrorland, a haunted attraction in Miami, finds props at flea markets and scours curbs on evenings when residents put out unwanted furniture and other items for city pickup. “We found a really nice old vintage table that we transformed into a rotting table where somebody’s eating somebody else,” he says.
When renovating his bathroom, Thomas Hall of Richmond — who’s been creating intricate Jack-o-lantern displays for 16 years — saved the old toilet. He kept it for the following Halloween, when he staged one of his pumpkins throwing up into it.
Maybe you’re not ready to become the hardest core Halloween house on the block (there’s always next year). But there are baby steps you can take to give your usual decor extra oomph.
- Start with those store-bought skeletons — don’t they look a bit sterile for replica human remains? Brubacher recommends coating them in liquid latex for texture, followed by a layer of wood stain to age them. (Or, you know, you could just roll them around in dirt.)
- Resist carving your pumpkins until a few days before Halloween to avoid rot. Then consider swapping that orange plastic carving knife for a drywall knife instead. Lou Cantolupo, a large-scale pumpkin sculptor in Washington, D.C., says drywall knives are sharper and lead to more precise designs. He enlists a number of power tools, too, but those might be a little advanced for an amateur.
- Think about other senses. Finally, think of your decorations as more than just something to look at. “What do you smell? What do you taste?” says Rose. “If you think about those things in your mind as you’re creating your haunt, it’s going to make for an amazing experience.” She adds a seasonal scent — such as a campfire smell — to her fog machine: “We just really want it to be something of a sensory overload.”
