Is the Top Hat in your creepy closet of Halloween costumes haunted enough? Ours wasn’t!

Although it was a decent accessory for the grave digger costume that I was going for during our 2010 Halloween party… It just kind of sat there on top my head, not really exuding any creep factor.

I knew that it was in need of a good home haunter‘s make over!

Most Halloween decorations & props that have a good creep factor to them, generally do not appear to be new & shinny – they are usually dusty, beat-up things that have a mysterious shroud of age about them.

Authentic looking Halloween costumes should be no different.

So when I set out to enhance the creepiness of my grave digger‘s top hat I thought to myself, “What ingredients would transform this ordinary looking hat into a haunting headpiece”.

These are the following haunted ideas that I came up with;

Center Piece Talisman

As far as the talismans were concerned I wanted a center piece on the front “crown“ of the hat and then also the hat band needed some more Halloween finesse.

For the “crown“ center piece I chose a simple, cheap plastic bat from the dollar store and applied the following steps to it;

• • Carefully, using a couple of drill bits hollowed out the head

• • Drilled small holes all the way through the eyes

• • Highlighted, with white paint, the raised detail edges of the bat

• • Hot glued the bat to the font center of the hat

• • From the inside of the hat, poked through the hat into the hollow of the bats head

• • Removed the flashing LED Lights of an old dollar store Halloween toy

• • Added a little a length of wire between the circuit board & the LED lights

• • Inserted the LED lights into the hole of the hat so that they lined up with the bat‘s eyes

• • Hot glued lights and circuit board to the inside of the Top Hat

With that the center piece talisman part was done!


Hat Band Talismans

The hat band talismans were even easier than the spooky bat center piece. I had found some neat little skull choker necklaces in the Halloween costume accessory department of the dollar store (did I mention that I love the dollar store!)

So this part really was as simple as;

• • Set the chokers to circumference of the hat band

• • Place Skull chokers onto hat

• • Arrange Skulls to liking and hot glue in place

• • Garnish with a beat-up feather from another Halloween prop

And viola the hat band talismans are also done!

Weather Worn Appearance

For this I wasn‘t too interested in actually making holes & rips in the hat itself, I only wanted it to appear weather stained and beat-up

So once again I fell back on an old home haunting trick, dry brushing some white highlights onto a black prop, to achieve the look I wanted.

If you‘ve never dry brushed before you may want to practise the technique for awhile before tackling your costume piece.

• • Barely dip a dry brush into white paint

• • Wipe off most of the paint

• Lightly brush the white paint on in feathering, random strokes

• • Ensure the edges get well highlighted to help outline the hat in low light

Dusty With Age

This Halloween costuming trick could not be easier! Each time in year past where we‘ve needed to make part of a costume or some spooky prop appear to be dusty with age we‘ve used baby powder!

• • Take the Top Hat outdoors

• • Pour a generous amount of baby powder into you hand

• • Carefully, not to inhale the powder, blow powder evenly onto the Hat

• • Begin lightly blowing with an even pressure do not below to hard or it‘ll won‘t look natural

We repeated until the desire dusty look has been achieved. If we were not happy we just blew off all the baby powder and started over.

Well there it is – how we haunted our Top Hat! It was very simple, it hardly cost any money at all and most importantly we believe the finished piece had at least 13 times more creep factor than the original!

Thanks for Looking.
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.

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