2011 Yard Themes?

[Murfreesboro]

OMG, where do all you ppl live? I am so moving there! My neighborhood does nothing! Last year the timing was not right to decorate the yard, but I really would like to do something spooky this year. Some grave stones with a creepy fence maybe. Right now it all comes down to timing

I live in Murfreesboro, TN, near Nashville. We are on a busy street, so much so that we don't get so many TOTers on the big night, though one of the nearby streets is actually a big Halloween destination because so many people decorate. I still decorate because I am confident that drivers see what I do.

If you live in a town, I bet there are streets or neighborhoods that decorate OTT. You need to drive around your town and see what people are doing in the month of Oct. I believe that parents today are driving their kids to the best-decorated areas so the children will get a full-on Halloween experience.

Sometimes all it takes is one house to set off a sort of neighborhood "competition" re decorating. The street near me that has become such a draw wasn't like that when we moved here in the mid-90s. One family, in the middle of the block, started doing the OTT decorating. Gradually their neighbors followed suit. That's the way it can start.

[SpookShowBaby]

I live in the suburbs and some people put out some decorations, but nothing spectacular. There are a couple houses in the next city over that go all out, that's about it

[Murfreesboro]

Aww, too bad! In Murfreesboro, besides the street near me (which I know about mainly because of where I live), everyone in town knows to go to Main Street, which is the heart of the historic district. Those houses are owned by some of the wealthiest people in town, and they are very old. Many are antebellum, and none are younger than the 1890s, I'd say. The merchants on the square at the head of Main Street invite kids to TOT around the square at 6 p.m. on Halloween, and after the kids circle the square, they start down the street. Those houses on Main Street are un-be-lievable on Halloween night. The decorations in every yard, and the variety of costumes, both on the homeowners and the people filing by, are really something to see.

[SpookShowBaby]

Well, maybe someday I will live somewhere that goes all out for Halloween. We get a lot of Christmas stuff in my neighborhood and I could read in the middle of the night from all the lights. Ish.

[Murfreesboro]

The funny thing about Main Street, especially, is that the decorations aren't up for long at all. I don't see any of them much before Oct. 30. I often wonder how those people do it so fast. They don't stay up long, either. It's almost as if it happens by magic.

[Jack Skellington]

The driveway takes up most of our space out the front, but either side of that we have two seperate areas. We're gunna go for the slightly bigger one & build up our cemetery this year. Last year we only had a couple of toombstones, but this year we'll be buying more along with a skeleton, fencing, moss, cobwebs, a sign, a couple of ghosts & candles. Possibly an archway if there's enough room but that's not likely.

We're also gunna have uncarved pumpkins set just away from it, so it looks like a pumpkin patch.

We'll also have our carved Jack O'Lanterns & front door decorations.

[Pumpkin56]

In the past I've always built a graveyard that was illuminated with blue flood lights. I have this fantastic reaper that I hang up in our big live oak tree and when I point one of the flood lights just right, it makes the entire tree and reaper glow and it casts the craziest shadows. I think somebody asked earlier what kind of music or sounds they use in their yard haunts. For my graveyard, I had a very specific idea of what I wanted, and it took me forever to find it, but I used this recording of whispers. I have speakers set up on both sides of the yard so that people walking up to the house are surrounded by these whispering, disjointed voices--you can't really tell what's being said, but it's very eerie nonetheless. It sounds a lot like the kind of ghostly whispering stuff you hear in horror movies.

This year however, since Halloween falls on a Monday (and I just didn't get the turnout I would have liked last Halloween which was on Sunday), the graveyard will be taking the year off. It's too much of a production, especially since I probably won't have as many TOTers and most of my block doesn't even decorate (lousy bunch of life ruiners).

I will be decorating the yard though. Just be doing a haunted pumpkin theme. Pumpkins everywhere!! Because you know what? Even if the rest of my neighbors don't decorate, and all the malls and churches are stealing my TOTers away from me, I gotta keep Halloween alive on the 365 I refuse to be a dud on the best day of the year and I will be celebrating, even if I'm the only one.

[Andybev01]

The funny thing about Main Street, especially, is that the decorations aren't up for long at all. I don't see any of them much before Oct. 30. I often wonder how those people do it so fast. They don't stay up long, either. It's almost as if it happens by magic.

You can pay people to do that.

[Morticia]

Random question here, not enough of one to start a new thread, someone mentioned glow in the dark cobwebs for a black light. I bought a 250 watter this year, wouldn't it work just as well with the white as with the glow in the dark?

[Pumpkin56]

Yes! The white webs do work well with black lights. It's a different looking effect, but it looks great all the same

[SpookyBlackKat]

I've never put a blacklight on my webs cause they're usually indoors, but I would think so. The glow in the dark spray is only $2-$3 though. I saw some out at Target yesterday. The glow in the dark webs are kinda green so I'll probably stay away from them.

[Murfreesboro]

The funny thing about Main Street, especially, is that the decorations aren't up for long at all. I don't see any of them much before Oct. 30. I often wonder how those people do it so fast. They don't stay up long, either. It's almost as if it happens by magic.

You can pay people to do that.

LOL! I never thought about that, but I bet you're right! These houses belong to some of the wealthiest people in town.

[Pumpkin56]

As much as I hate to sound like a dud, I actually don't put my outside decorations out until late afternoon on Halloween. I don't want any little punks taking or destroying my stuff and even if that wasn't a concern, the weather in Dallas can be a wee bit unpredictable. But the inside of my house looks haunted all month long

[Pumpkin56]

Question for the yard haunters: do any of you use any kind of sound effects in your set-up? The last few years I've done a graveyard and I used a recording of disembodied voices. This year however, I'm setting up a haunted pumpkin patch. Does anyone have any suggestions on sound? I've considered howling wolves, or wind blowing/rustling leaves, or maybe the sound of owls. I would like to do something creepy, but not over the top ridiculous.

[Murfreesboro]

Well, last year, in one of the houses off Main Street, someone had rigged a recording of a woman's voice softly speaking in a foreign language. It sounded as if it might have been the Angelina Jolie dialogue from the movie Beowulf--I think it was Old English (a language I did study in grad school, so I could catch a few words). The thing about Old English is that you can't understand much of it, but you can catch a word every now and then. And her delivery in the movie was creepy, because she was playing the mother of the monster Grendel, but in that film's interpretation, Grendel's mother is a seductress. So I would say something like that could really make your TOTer's flesh crawl. It did mine.

Anglo-Saxon is a good language for evoking witches' spells (they use it in the TV series Merlin for that purpose), but you could maybe find something Celtic, too.