Gothic Security Chain Fence

Over the years here, while rare, we sometimes get a rambunctious trick-or-treater that is in such a hurry to reach as many houses as possible on Halloween night that they go across our lawn from the next door neighbor's driveway and cut through our graveled landscaping area to get to our front walkway instead of coming around to the walkway entrance on our driveway. With all of our jack-o'-lanterns, props, and shrubs in that area we wanted to discourage any shortcut takers by fencing off that section of the haunt display. We tried to make it look "haunt appropriate" by purchasing USA made gothic security chain fence posts and even decided to have one of our skeleton props at the very end assist by holding the end of the black plastic security chain. Just trying to get some of the more durable parts of the haunt up now that won't interfere with regular yard maintenance. In about 4 weeks, we'll start setting up the full yard haunt display with the target of being completed the day before Halloween.

New Jersey Area Haunts

A "Haunted Trail" yard haunt in New Jersey.

Outside Pre-Haunt Halloween House Decorating Completed

We decided to put up the "Frankie" inflatable decoration we got as a pre-haunt/decoy decoration. The past few days/nights we've started to see other houses in the region put out their Halloween yard decorations and decided it was time to unleash Frankie with Halloween only 43 days away. We're happy with the ambient haunt lighting and overall look for this year's theme. We try not to repeat haunt lighting color palettes from year to year to keep it interesting. The inflatable and door Frankie decorations will come down when we start setting up the haunt at the end of October.

Halloween Decoy Decorating Begins

We got the LED C9 light stringers up on the house today because it was in the mid 60s and dry out. We also put up the plastic Frankenstein's Monster decoration we got from Target last year and in the process discovered we had also purchased purple and green LED mini lights from Target last year as well for this year. We had forgotten all about them until we discovered the box of lights in our outdoor lighting supplies tote in the basement this morning. We thought we were going to skip putting up lights and garland around the door this year, so now we have to go out and purchase some appropriate black foliage Halloween vines for around the door to cover up the light wires. That's the problem when you curate Halloween props and decorations years in advance, you forget what you have! Next week we will put out our 8' inflatable Frankenstein's Monster decoration on our front paver terrace. We call these our "decoy decorations" because we only start to set up our Halloween yard haunt just before Halloween. Years ago, we sometimes literally set up the haunt the morning of Halloween. We like the haunt to be a surprise for the trick-or-treaters on Halloween, but we also get some nasty weather during the course of October that would be detrimental to our props with extended exposure to the elements. However, we eventually realized that our haunt set up tradition could have a negative effect in terms of trick-or-treater turnout on Halloween night because we were a house of "Halloween Scrooges", so we started putting up pre-haunt "decoy" decorations along with our house light stringers (which primarily serve as ambient lighting for our haunt) when spooky season decorating begins. This way we're advertising that we're still around and that this is a house to come visit on Halloween. We also are now trying to foreshadow what the current year's haunt theme will be with the decoy decorations we put out. Also the decoy decorations are intended to be "tame" in comparison to what the actual Halloween haunt will look like.

Frankenstein's Monster Greeter Prop Completed

Another 2026 Frankenstein's Bride themed Halloween yard haunt prop is completed. We modded our 2021 throne prop with a foot rest and put Frankie in shackles to pay homage to a scene from the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein movie. This prop will be in our "Greeter" location for our front walkway.

Local Area Haunts 2026 Part 1

Spotted our first yard haunt of the season today and only a few houses down from our own house! A promising start to spooky season already!

2026 Aedicula Headstone Prop Completed