As Halloween Home Haunters we have all created many props for our haunts.

Any of us that has ever created a skeleton prop from scratch knows that is it no small fear to achieve the correct proportions, articulation and of course get an an authentic look.

So when we came across an unbelievable picture of a knitted Skeleton by Ben Cuevas we knew we had to spread the word about Ben’s awesome talent!

Visit Ben’s page to read all about and view more fantastic photos of this mind-blowing masterpiece!

See More From Screaming Scarecrow’s Cabinet of Curiousities.

Thanks for Dropping By.
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.

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.

PumkinRot truly is a master of the macabre and over the years has elevated the practice of Halloween home haunting to a Dark Art Form.

There are very few home haunters on the web today that have not been inspired or outright awe struck by his amazing props, spooky displays, dark photos and other creations.

If you are unfamiliar with his exquisitely twisted creatures of the night drop by PUMPKINROT.COM and have a look for yourself.

In addition to all his other cool Tricks and Treats, I now see that he has honed his short filmed making skills to a fine edge! Bravo!

See More From Screaming Scarecrow’s Cabinet of Curiousities.

Thanks for checking us out
Please have a look around our haunted website
Cheers ScreamingScarecrow.

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.

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Shimmering back & forth across the midnight boundary of this world and the next, the Bat Prophet is able to hauntingly forecast your future. The trouble is, too often that future is very short, as other-worldly wraiths hitch a ride to our side.

See More Of Screaming Scarecrow‘s Dart Art!

Hope You Enjoyed Our Dark Art Number 033.
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.

Lurking in the Halloween Night darkness with gapping maws and terrible talons, a myriad of scary creatures of the night provide this guy with an endless procession of bodies for burial.

See More Of Screaming Scarecrow‘s Dart Art!

Hope You Enjoyed Our Dark Art Number 032.
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.

Pumpkin Escapes Carving
Only To Suffer a Delectable Demise!

October 31st 2011, we setup a pile of pumpkins for our haunted home display.

We carved Jack O Lantern decorations all evening on the 30th and then several more during the afternoon of Halloween.

Although this kind of home haunting was a big departure from our normal chills and thrills most people seemed to enjoy it and it was a ton less work for us!

A few days after Halloween while cleaning up and hauling away the few props and decorations that we did drag out, we came across this sneaky little gourd who somehow hid itself in the corner of our dinning room and was completely overlooked during the carving frenzy!

Having cleverly avoided becoming a spooky outdoor decoration there was only one fate left for this perfectly ripe pumpkin and that was for the lurking lunatics at Screaming Scarecrow Studios to become some gourd gobbling goblins!

Nothing fancy or difficult – we simply cut off the top and bottom then cut the rest into wedges and removed the fleshy seeds portion of each wedge

Once the wedge slices were prepped we then simply laid them out on a baking pan and deeply scored them in a checker pattern so they’d be ready to receive whatever yummy flavours we wanted.

See Books with Pumpkin Recipe Ideas

Some got garlic powder, seasoning salt & Cajun spices while other got sweet chilli sauce and then the last couple received a kiss of honey and of course there was butter!

Covered the whole shebang with tin foil and into the oven, at 300 degrees, we popped them for about 3hours. It was scary how tender they were!

We just forked them right off the rind which we didn’t eat in case you were wondering.

Oh so good! I hope every Halloween at least one pumpkin hides the Jack-O-Lantern carver‘s knife!

See More From Screaming Scarecrow’s Cabinet of Curiousities.

Happy Home Haunting and
May your Pumpkin Treats be so tasty it scary!
Cheers Screaming Scarecrow.

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!