What To Do When You‘re Not
Haunting Your House

You may think that after so many years of Halloween Home Haunting, that one would be bored to death if one was not to setup their regular crypt. Well turns out that not only was it relaxing from a family point of view it was quite the blast!

I would dare say that we had possibly as much Halloween fun (maybe more) this season because we played a lot harder this year!

It was a bit ironic this past season because we had made the decision to giveaway a ton Halloween props and decorations last Nov 2010. And at that time we had declared that we would take the 2011 haunting season off.

the irony came about in late August when we received an email from one of the Design Associate Producers of the Nate Berkus Show (which is a nationally-syndicated interior design show hosted by Oprah’s favorite designer, Nate Berkus).

it seems that after coming across our haunted website www.screamingscarecrow.com they wanted to know if we’d be interested in becoming a candidates for an upcoming segment featuring a home decked out for Halloween.

Well as you could imagine there was quite a lot of excitement in the scarecrow nest for a couple of days! But in the end because it was not a guarantee that our home would be the one shown on the segment and the fact that we’d curbied a good deal of our outdoor haunt props, graveyard and façade, we chose to say no the extremely tempting offer!

Then in September, the next amazingly fun thing that popped up was that Shawn & Lynn Mitchell from the “How to Haunt Your House” books fame asked me if I would like to review their third book. Which of course the answer was, “HELL YAH”!!

So they sent my the book and I hungrily consumed it as only a Home Haunt fan could! I‘ll post a full review of it at a later date but I‘m happy to say that I liked this book most of the three yet! (and not just because my written review is included in the first few pages of the book and a caption of the back cover!)

Then late in September I did something that I’ve wanted to do for a number years now and that was Haunting this old dilapidated, creepy log building on the farm where I grew up.

It turn out supper well – it was a one of best haunted display ever and it was pure, relaxed haunting fun to do. No pressure, no deadline and no cold weather!

If you haven‘t already, then see some photos of this local 2011 Zombie Walk. The first Zombie Walk WE‘ve ever participated in and it was so much fun we‘re going to do it again next year!

Second we attended an outdoor Halloween costume party with live bands. The best part of this macabre masquerade was that they had a great haunt setup with two paths

If you went left your were they had a haunted forest trail with some creepy buildings along the way and if you went right they had a totally different haunted path that led through some torture buildings, past a hearse and then into a pretty darn scary haunted building. Had tons of fun there, dressed up a the horror movie icon Jason!

The third event in October was we went to the Pro Halloween Haunt, Six Pines Farms to visit all of our haunted props that we’d given away to them.

Of course we also to check out their haunting efforts which turned out to be another blast of Halloween Fun – They run a full-on Haunted Barn of Doom, a Terror Train and live horror/haunted comedy show.

Then to round out the sinister season, because our creepy props and scary decorations were sitting in storage we helped out a friend decorate for his Halloween party by lending several creature props, coffins and various other dark decorations.

We Also attended a Halloween wedding social party the Saturday before Halloween where most everyone was dressed in their Halloween costumes and we won a couple of the prize draws!

Finally on the big day itself we quickly setup a quick, yet haunting pumpkin pile display in our driveway to greet the trick or treaters who dropped by. But by far, one of the most enjoyable things I did this past Halloween, which I haven’t be able to do for years is that I went trick-or-treating with my youngest – It was a great Halloween Holiday!

Thanks for reading about out vacation from running our home haunt.
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.

How To Haunt Your
Top Hat

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.

Visit Our Store

This year we took holidays from setting up our major Home Haunt and we apologize to everyone who expressed their disappointment but we had fun this year doing all the great Halloween things that the civilians get to do!

But still, we couldn‘t not setup a token haunted display – so just after 1:00pm in the afternoon on Halloween day itself – this is what we threw together…

(Note: we carved 20 fo the 31 pumpkins into Jack O lantern the night before)

Hope you enjoy our last minute Halloween décor!

Well this goes to show that if you‘re a motivated home haunter and have access to a gaggle of gourds (Thanks Dad! – he‘s close to 80 and he still grows a mean pumpkin patch each year!) you can always pull some Halloween home haunting magic out of your dusty top hat!

Hope you all had a Sinister Season!!!
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.

Dusk is upon us and this sinister witch sets out to brew up some magical potions for her Halloween fun!

As the Darkness deepens and the eerie red glow pulses from within the run down log building the wind rustles in the dry autumn leaves. Into the pot she drops some eye of newt and powder nightshade root…

Halloween night is near and the sooner the spell casting is begun the sooner the Dark Harvest will be done!

Creeping through the woods on dark and spooky night a lost soul came upon this Frightening Halloween sight!

All the best witches know that their most powerful spells are conjured under the light of that elusive Blue Moon!

There is only so much of a witch’s familiar that she can turn into tailismans or use in her potions. The remainder of the remains are laid to rest.

Piles of Skulls, bones and antlers litter the area around her bubbling cauldron.

Sinister smoke from a fiendish flame fed with bones of missing hikers and berry pickers rises to mix with the vapours of the bubbling cauldron!

Unfortunate fuel for the fires this wicked witch’s campfire!

Salem, her 13th black cat wanders in close to investigate the spellbinding dark aroma of her master’s brew!

Evil’s afoot in Witch Woods as Sinthe brews up some toadstool tea to welcome her soon to be visiting sisters Shriec & Slitra.

Preparations begin at dusk becasue Halloween night time is the right time to work her enchantments.

A handful of magic to sweeten the pot,
All the ingredients to conjure up fright she’s got.

We hope you enjoy these Haunting Pictures of “SpellCasting in Witch Woods” as much as we had fun setting up the display and taking the photos!

Thanks for Dropping By.
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.

Something Wicked This Way Comes!

Last Halloween when we decided that we would take a break from haunting our home – many friends, neighbours and fans of our haunt ask the same question,

“What are you going to do if you‘re not decorating for Halloween?!!”

Well actually the answer to that is quite simple…

All the great Halloween things that everybody else does that we never get to because we’re too busy setting up our haunt!

And shuffling along in the 2011 Zombie Walk is just one of those things!

Most major cities have some form of a Zombie Walk and ours is no different.

This year the 2011 lurching brain fest was held as a food drive for the Winnipeg Harvest.

The city’s police estimated that some 1,200 of us decomposing, flesh eating, living-challenged took to the streest and terrorized (in a fun way and for a good cause) downtown.

Myself and a faithful member of our home haunt’s skeleton crew tossed on some Halloween zombie makeup then pulled on some warm socks and headed out into the chilly October night in search of Braaaains!

And not surprisingly, when we reached the kick off point for the undead shuffle, there were plenty of brain munching zombies to be found!

While some infected members of the zombie horde had an eye out looking for fresh meat…

A lonely prophetic voice in the urban wilderness rang a forlorn bell and cried warnings of the approaching zombie apocalypse!

This guy obviously didn’t read “The Zombie Survival Guide” from Max Brook or else he’d be fleeing the chomping teeth that swept towards him carried on a tide of shuffling feet!

There were all manner of the walking dead in attendance and the sheer numbers choked the street and brought traffic to a stand still.

Helpless motorist simply had to wait for the wandering horde of infected meat sacks to shamble past hoping they wouldn’t get an infecting bite.

Most “victims” seemed to take it all in in a good natured way while some of the un-dead left behind bloody reminders of the occupants narrow brush with death.

Even the occasional body part was some times left behind clinging to windows and trying to wiggle its reanimated self into the interior.

With no escape as hundreds of zombies poured pass his car window all one travel could do was channel his nail biting terror into an awesome zombie sketch!

That was awesome dude!

And still the hordes of the walking dead kept lurching forward, a moaning mass of meat munching madness!

Crowds of warm blooded spectators lined the street to watch in “horror”.

Of course when hell is full and the dead walk the earth you‘ll find the Zombie Control Unit responding to the un-holy terror stalking the city streets in an attempt to control the virus before it spreads to all mankind!

Crack shot members of the elite zombie hunting black ops team were also on hand trying to stem the tide but of course there was too many walkers and too few bullets.

Defences finally fell to a rag tag group of mercenary zombie hunters with their sharpen head severing tools of the trade.

And it was a good thing that there was some defence marshalled against the onslaught of the viral outbreak

Because as the infection mutated, the virus produced scarier and crazier zombies!

Of course what makes any event a lot of fun to be a part of is how much effort other folks put into their costumes and role playing.

This being the 1st zombie horde that we’ve participated in we’d have to say it was a great time even though we only shuffled along till the forks.

If you‘ve never shambled along with 1200 or so other zombies we recommend it!

Especially if you are raising food for the less fortunate because HUNGER is far scarier than Zombies any day of the year not just at Halloween.

And where else could you possibly ever hang out with a 1000 year old Viking Zombie!

Thanks for visiting
Why don’t you stay awhile and check out more of our Halloween site!
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.

For a bit better than a year now we, the lurking lunatics here at Screaming Scarecrow Studios, have been having a great time haunting the web.

We have mostly been creating our own unique Halloween content based on our past home haunting but we also add in some other content and videos that interest us from elsewhere.

200 on topic posts in this relatively short period of time shows our commitment to keeping our haunted website stocked with fresh and fun Halloween content.

For our 200th post we’ve collected 200 Halloween photos from our past home haunts. Lots of them posted here for the first time.

Thanks for dropping by to checks us out again and again as many of you do!

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Thanks for Looking.
Keep on Haunting the Web!
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.

This guy was one of our best Halloween props of all time. We had tons of haunt fun making this prop and haunting with him. Click here to read all about our Chicken Boy Prop

Check else where online for more Halloween decorating ideas.

Holy Crap! A third post for our 2010 home haunt’s layout and Halloween party décor – either we setup far too many creature props and other decorations or I must be too long winded!

If you haven‘t started at the beginning with our 1st post on our 2010 Halloween home haunting antics and you want to – then start with this HAUNTED HOUSE RESURRECTED post.

Leaving our living room (which was decorated literally floor to ceiling no joke, we even black out the ceiling with black plastic for that midnight crypt effect) we step up a couple of stairs into our Dining Room.

This room was turned into a dungeon of terror! Like most of the other rooms in the house we moved all the furniture out and into storage so that there’d be plenty of room for the goblins & ghouls that came to our Halloween party!

That’s right a week+ without any table or chairs! Creepy haunted house camping in the midst of a jungle Halloween props and decorum! For about 3 weeks, it really is insane living at our house!

The walls top to bottom were done in the dungeon stone scene setter and we decorated the ceiling with grey construction housing wrap which finished off the dungeon look nicely

For the haunted displays we set up our wicked witch in her hell‘s kitchen while across from her using the pantry as an alcove we resurrected Vamparilla, our female vampire prop, for another Halloween season.

Of course there were plenty of skulls and skeleton props and couple more full size zombie props. After all if your party invite says, “Come and join us at our Zombie Lounge for a spectacular Halloween Howl“ you should really have a goodly number of zombies lurking around in the shadows!

This year we didn’t recreate our full on torture chamber which had a working guillotine, stockade prop, executioners and much more – instead we turned our bathroom into a mini chamber of horrors. There were plenty of dark instruments of torture and a handful of unfortunate victims.

Overall, even though the amount of work was once again ridiculous, we and those who joined us for our costume party or came trick or treating all enjoyed Halloween 2010. The new and the old scenes, props & decorations that were setup and of course we hope you do too.

Thanks for checking us out!
Happy Halloween Haunting All Year Round!
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.

In this second post we’ll continue describing our Halloween home haunt’s layout and the different decorations that we setup and enjoyed for the return of our Halloween party.

If you haven‘t already read the 1st post of our 2010 Halloween haunting then and you want to; then go ahead and read and start out at the beginning with our HAUNTED HOUSE RESURRECTED post.

If not, then let’s get on with part II of this spooky tale!

As you actually entered our house there were a couple of Hallway Henchmen monster props and a wall breaker prop waiting to greet & Meat you. Moving past these creepy and imposing guardians of the dark one then entered into what used to be our living room.

This space, made larger with the absence of any furniture, was our dance floor / bar area. We decorated it in kind of a wrap around manner.

Starting on one side continuing on with the haunted house theme there were haunted pictures and haunted bookshelves and a number of life size zombie props. We put ours together ourselves but have to admit that we were tempted by some of the cool zombies you can buy online!

I get distracted easily by scary looking Halloween props, anyhow, with our homemade zombies, the room transitioned into a great looking Zombie Lounge shooter bar.

We made this bar on a step-up purely so we could put a row of green eyed skulls underneath it. That haunting effect turned out perfect with their eerie glow reflecting up off the dance floor!
Looking for Halloween music?

The Shooter bar was the highlight of our party which we billed as a Halloween Howl at our Zombie Lounge. With many a creature of the night picking their poison from crystal decanters poised on a black shelf in front of a mirror backing.

This mirror backing and some creepy, gothic looking, mirror candle holders made the whole creepy area appear larger because they reflected the haunted scenes back into the room. Over all an easy and interesting tip on how to make a decorated area look bigger on Halloween night.

Finishing off the raised step that was the bar area, in the corner, was our Grave Robber character who carried a pumpkin lantern prop in his bony fingers while cradling a his shovel and a toe pincher coffin homemade prop.

There were also plenty of Styrofoam tombstones and his whole scene transitioned into a Halloween cemetery scene complete with many tombstone props and even spooky dead trees which we brought inside the house. Do you want to see some of our haunted trees?

Come back and visit us again for another post when we cover our Dieing Room and bathroom

Thanks for Looking.
See you next time.
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.