Yard Haunt Props Are Ascending From Our Basement

With Halloween only a few weeks away, we've started moving our heavier wood built props out of our basement and into our garage. This summer we finally got around to getting a 10' x 14' shed with 7' walls and tall Cape Cod style peaked roof in our back yard. Other than mannequins, masks, costumes, and our more fragile props, all the heavier wood built props will be stored in the shed from here on out. No more moving bulky heavy Halloween props up and down our "treacherous staircase". The shed will also house a lot of yard tools and items that took up floor space in our garage, it's not just for Halloween prop storage. We got our custom designed shed from Backyard Outfitters, but here's a shed article regarding "Spooky Storage".

Powers Farm Market, Pittsford NY

Local Area Haunts 2026 Part 2

Fog Machine Chiller Experiment 2026

Back in 2024 we took some advice from Pumpkinrot and implemented his simple fog machine chiller technique of using a 12 foot length of 4" diameter black perforated drainage hose (with the far end capped off) and shoved several narrow frozen water bottles down the hose and pointed the fog machine nozzle at the hose entrance. It did a really nice job for our photo shoot using our Froggy Fog's Freezin Fog low lying fog juice:

2024 Fog Chiller Effect

Even without the frozen water bottles inserted into the length of hose, the 4" diameter perforated hose has a better controlled release of the fog versus just using the fog machine by itself (which is what we do on Halloween night for the trick-or-treaters weather permitting). But for this year's haunt photo shoot we're going to give stainless steel cooler pack cylinders a try instead of frozen water bottles. These sealed water filled stainless steel cylinders supposedly stay frozen longer and even perhaps will hold a chill on a cold Halloween night (pretty typical in the Western NY/Finger Lake region) just being outside. We figured these cylinders will be easy to clean and reuse for future haunts as well.

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.