How To Build a Front Yard Halloween Graveyard

First, a few words about what you do not want to do. Halloween is a busy time, so you don't want to spend your entire holiday building an elaborate scene in front of your house. Remember, unlike Christmas, it will only last a couple of days. Keeping it simple and easy to erect is the way to go.

One of the easiest ways to build the whole scene from scratch is to get a series of gray cardboard slats. They can be purchased from a stationary supply site, or in the form of a pre-made Graveyard Scene in the decorations section of a Halloween site.

They assemble in a few minutes, either with clips or a little bit of household glue, sort of like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle, only much simpler. Then they're fitted with something to help them stand up. That can be as elementary as a bent coat hanger, or a few short, thin wooden stakes that glue to the back.

Put a few up in the front yard and you are already half way toward having a complete graveyard scene for Halloween. But as they stand, so to speak, they are only half of the total picture. Creating the other half is almost as easy.

The gravestones can be decorated in several ways using ordinary household items. A can of glow-in-the-dark spray paint is an excellent way to put funny names or phrases onto the headstones. Cobweb mesh or spray is another atmosphere-generating decoration that is super easy to add.

Now, for the element that will really make your Halloween graveyard scene shine, literally and figuratively: lights.

In order to give the decoration that Hollywood finish, emulate what the pros in Tinseltown do. Create lots of deep shadows around the headstones, alternated by spotlights at the right places.

That can be done in a jiffy by placing some ordinary lawn lights on the backside of select gravestones. The solar-powered type works best, since there is no need to run any wires around the yard that the kids can trip over. Just drive the stake into the ground behind the display and you're done. Don't overdo the number, though. One light will serve well for up to three or four headstones.

To supplement the scene, a few atmospheric lights on the roof can give the perfect accents. Keep everything at a low wattage and pointed indirectly to create those long, spooky shadows. A single one on the porch near the front door can serve double duty, lighting the doorway and spilling some illumination out into the yard.

To give it the final touch, if you live in a climate where you have access to them, lots of big leaves can really help. Leaves help create a scene of quiet suspense. You can even spill some off the roof every once in a while to give a cooperative actor in a skeleton suit a fright for the happy trick-or-treaters.

Enjoy!