Haunted Halloween Outdoor Decorations

Every year our family goes all out in decorating for Halloween! We started by just doing simple things, like a haunted graveyard or a giant homemade spider on the front yard. After that we tried our hand at various types of scarecrows sitting on the front porch near the door. The past few years though we've expanded our decorations to the vacant lot beside us, creating a "Haunted Halloween Walk" for my son and his friends to explore Halloween night! (If you don't have a vacant lot to use, you could use your front, back, or side yards! Or why not create a Haunted Halloween walk inside your house?!)

In addition to store bought decorations, we made stuff ourselves. I'll tell you about some of the things we made, in addition to sharing with you some great products!

The easier way to make a Halloween hand is to stuff a medical glove, add a dowel rod, and poke it in the ground.

This year my son and some of his friends got together to make arms like the ones in the photo above.

1. They started by wrapping toilet paper around their arms.
2. On top of this they wrapped masking tape and duct tape.
3. Then they carefully...this was the hard part....cut the paper arm off of the living person.
4. Next they stuffed medical gloves with small pieces of newspaper.
5. Then they attached the gloves to arm.
6. The next step was to cover the arm and glove with paper mache.
7. Next they painted the arms and hands scary looking colors.
8. The final step, which they have not completed yet, will be to attach fake fingernails!

One of the highlights of our decorations each year has been a graveyard in either the side yard or front yard. We started off making tombstones ourselves out of paper bags that we wrote catchy sayings on, but quickly progressed to store bought ones. Some years we leave it simple; other years we include a hand rising up out of the grave!

If you'd like, add a hand or other body part rising up out of one or more of your graves. You can also scatter a few bones around in the area.....or use them here and there on the haunted walk, if you're creating one!

If you'd like to make your own hands, try stuffing a plastic medical glove with cotton or stuffing.

For the dummy above, we made a head out of paper mache stretched over a balloon, and then painted a face on it. Once the head was completely dry, we stuffed old clothes with balled up plastic grocery bags, newspapers, etc. Although some of our dummies had legs and feet too, my son decided to make this dummy a bit different...so he designed "intestines" by using fake blood on the newspapers coming out from under the shirt.

Fake coffins can be placed outside in your graveyard, along the haunted walk, as a centerpiece on your table, or anywhere in the party room. Try sticking a skeleton or a doll inside and leaving the lid slightly ajar...

Larger coffins can actually hold a person...who moves a little when an unsuspecting party goer looks in. But hey, that's just plain scary!!

This is part of an old Halloween costume draped over a gold styrofoam skull. You could probably also achieve a similar effect by carefully draping a piece of black cloth over some sort of head. In fact, although I don't think we took any photos of it, we did lay some black cloth over a few of our skulls which were hung from tree branches.

You can use creepy cloth for numerous things. Drape part of it over the tombstones or bushes in your graveyard.

It can be cut and used to make ghouls hanging from trees or on top of a stick you've stuck in the ground. Sometimes we use some sort of a head under the cloth (a styrofoam skull or a homemade papermache head, but the cloth can also be arranged without the use of a head under it to create a more wispy looking ghoul. You can use clear fishing line to make the "arms" stand out some, if desired.

You can also use creepy cloth to cover tables or furniture, or drape it around the railing of your banister or porch.

Fog machines are great additions to a graveyard! We've also used them to create a spookier feel to a section of our haunted walk. The fog really adds to the mystery and magic of the evening.

Last year we arranged chairs in a circle around a firepit and let guests roast marshmallows and talk.

Will there be a place in the yard where your party guests will sit and perhaps tell ghost stories? If so, this might be a fun decoration for that area! If you have a fire though, make sure to keep this and other decorations away!