2026 Haunt Character #1: The Graverobber

As we move things from this year's yard haunt from our garage into our basement, we also start working on next year's haunt characters as the PVC pipe mannequins get freed up. Meet the first character for our 2026 Frankenstein's Bride themed yard haunt: The Graverobber. The plastic prop spade we purchased was far too short for him to be leaning on, but we were able to swap in a custom length of 3/4" PVC pipe. The spade just needs to be spray painted next summer. We're going for a more realistic look for our 2026 haunt theme. Really happy with how this one turned out. He will be standing in the graveyard behind a recently dug up wooden casket (our 2009 built wood coffin prop).

Pumpkin Portraits 2025

Local Area Haunts 2025 Part 6

Edgar Allen Poe Speakeasy Part II

We attended the Edgar Allen Speakeasy Part II last night, this time hosted at the Historic German House in Rochester, NY's South Wedge neighborhood. We attended Part I at the Little Theater in Rochester's East End neighborhood last year. It was another phantasmic show. We were delighted to hear they will be returning again in the future with Part III. There are multiple tour dates across the country. Check the Fever event website for it appearing at a city near you or at the show's website.

Our Halloween 2026 Yard Haunt Theme

Halloween 2025 Postmortem

Despite Mother Nature throwing everything she had at us tonight (the weather got worse after the sun set), we still got ~75 trick-or-treaters. Not our lowest count, but this was the second lowest count after 16 Halloweens at this house (2020 was the lowest count of 53 due to the pandemic). We had several props knocked over and damaged by the wind and had to pivot and use LED faux outdoor rated pillar candles in our jack-o'-lanterns due to the strong winds and driving rain. The faux 3" outdoor pillar candles actually looked better than real candles in the pumpkins (see photos below), so we're thinking that's going to be the norm for our haunts. We're going to have to retire some prop staples and reengineer some things for future haunts as a "lessons learned" from the past couple days of horrible weather.

Hell

One of the worst Halloweens weather-wise since we started doing an annual yard haunt in 1998. Cold (currently 43 degrees), rain, and horribly strong winds. Even worse than Halloween 2019 which was wet but at least in the 50s. We've made lots of emergency adjustments to the haunt since Wednesday night due to the constant rain and wind since, so we're exhausted at the moment! We had 111 trick-or-treaters in 2019, so fingers crossed we still get a good turnout tonight but this is such a huge disappointment across the board after so much hard work.