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Slashdot Asks: Notes For Next Hallowe'en?
There are 364 more shopping days until next year's Hallowe'en. But while this year's is still fresh in the memory, I'd like to start gathering ideas for next year in the hopes of actually making my neighborhood worthwhile as a trick-or-treating destination, specifically for fun projects to actually give my yard a haunted-house feel. (For the second time in three years, there were zero candy-seekers, and I'd like to convince my neighbors to make the whole block more decorated and spooky, even if we never get all Alek Komarnitsky.) Did you create an animatronic zombie for your yard? Glowing eyes to appear from behind the bushes? Poltergist-style rising graves to frighten the children? Remote-controlled candy dispensers? If you used any kind of complex haunt technology at home, what things worked and what didn't? (I hear too many stories about fog machines leaking to make them sound like a good idea.)
Whats up with the '
Some little punks kicked in all of my kids pumpkins. SO next year leg-hold-traps go in the pumpkins.
"second time in three years, there were zero candy-seekers, and I'd like to convince my neighbors to make the whole block more decorated and spooky..."
Too late. The kids know you as creepy.
Nothing scarier than the design of Alek Komarnitsky's website.
2014 was the last year for Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights.
I for one, welcome Timothy has the next Griswold Overlord
Seriously. Go down to costco. Buy 10 boxes of full sized candies. It will cost you $200. Much less than a lot of crappy Halloween decorations. I guarantee you, the kids will remember. Often into adulthood. "There was this one house that gave out full sized bars!"
For bonus points, keep your receipts, and return any box you didn't end up opening.
Fuck Halloween. Nothing more than a retail store plan to suck money from people who can't really afford it.
You've got it right. Our Lord and Savior only needs ONE converted Pagan Holiday, TWO is a bonus, THREE would be GREEDY!
Let's be more charitable.
I put out a Jack-o-lantern and had over 150 kids last night. Seriously, they bring the atmosphere.
The reason there are so many coming here (and it's a LOT of fun!!) is because of one big thing: location. It's a nice, middle class family neighborhood right next to a larger city. Parents drive from everywhere to here because it's easy and safe, and the kids love it because their amount of loot is only limited by the amount they can carry. (It's funny watching some of them struggle under the weight of their bulging pillow cases. I usually give those a little extra.) The street turns into one big party.
I know what you're asking. How do you boot-strap *anything* into happening? If you don't have location, I don't know. Some houses here like to jazz it up and do the lights and jangling bones and the inflated ghosts, and don't get me wrong, those are wonderful. But most don't do that much. The buzz comes more from the kids running around shrieking and everyone having a ball.
Not quite a home haunt, and unfortunately I didn't take pictures, but I saw a guy driving a tardis down the street. He was following his kids as they did their trick or treating. He had built it using an electric wheelchair as the base. I don't give a crap about Dr Who but even I thought it was awesome. At one point he got out, said his wife had called and the lasers weren't working at home, told the kids to drive the tardis, and ran home. Unfortunately I didn't catch where he lived and we didn't see the house on our rounds.
We've lived in the same house for 15 years. The last 10 years saw a sharp decline in trick-or-treaters to the point of only a handful to only one trick-or-treaters last year. Almost the entire street didn't bother putting up decorations this year, but we did. We went way more overboard this year, putting up a large spiderweb across the front of the house with a large spider hanging from it, and some smaller webs with spiders. This year we had about 50 trick-or-treaters, so many that I had to ration 1 treat per person, and only had about 10 treats left over. I don't know if this was a fluke year or not, but it was nice compared to the last 15 years.
Yeah, seriously? Hallowe'en decorating tips on a tech and news site?
This is what we have to wade through when we load up the Slashdot web page these days?
1 - download Vixen and start buying gear for lighting automation.
http://www.vixenlights.com/
2 - buy several 1000-3000 lumen projectors and buy pre-made projection mapping video loops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
or custom over the top....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
combine the two and you will own your city's halloween decoration destination. Buy everything in pieces as you are looking at probably $20G to do it right.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The kids should be scared, like cry for mommie scared. Getting to the door should be a challenge of their willpower, and the treat a reward for making it without wetting themselves. Full sized candy? Be happy you're still alive, kiddo.
Zero candy seekers? Take your entire proposed budget and donate it to a charity for the homeless instead of buying completely unnecessary plastic/electronics products destined for the landfill.
In my community, there were fliers left on every door requesting that people not hand out candy from their homes due to concerns about children with dietary restrictions and "safety."
Instead, organizers designated several areas around the community where residents could reserve a spot for a table (table not supplied) to hand out candy under supervision from local volunteers. If the tables were not suitable, families were instructed to take their kids to the mall for "an authentic trick or treating experience."
I happened to need something from the mall, so I got to see their idea of a fun Halloween first-hand. Those shops handing out candy had hung photocopies of a tiny bitmapped 1980s "The Print Shop" style picture of a pumpkin near their doorways. They weren't permitted to hand out anything with chocolate, peanut, dairy, etc. so it was basically nothing but hard candies, mostly peppermints. 'Didn't look like anyone was hanging around for very long.
Halloween: Sanitized for your protection.
Don't participate in the pagan druid traditions. Treat it like any other day and grow up.
Halloween nowadays is no more druidic than Christmas. Cultures love to overlap holidays. All Saints' Day, Samain and the modern day Halloween are simply three variants of the same thing. Christmas was set to overlap other winter solstice celebrations, and I wouldn't be surprised of Easter was put there to overlap some spring festivities.
Modern holidays live a life of their own, far from their religious origins.
There are 365 more shopping days. You can also shop on February 29th next year.
The sun doesn't set till 8pm on halloween. How are things supposed to be spooky in broad daylight?
Guy Fawkes is even worse.
Don't get me started on Christmas lights, 9pm sunset.
When young (c1965) I had built a low power audio amp with them newfangled transistors and observed feedback when the mike was too close to the speaker. (duh!) For Halloween I put the amp/mike/speaker on a card table covered by a white sheet, tuned the feedback to produce a suitable scream, then set the gain to just below feedback. When you placed your hands about a foot above the sheet, the acoustic reflection would trigger feedback which disappeared when you removed your hands.
Trick-or-treaters were told "the spirits" had to approve giving them a treat: they had to pass their hands over the table with the sheet to see if the spirits approved. I told little kids the spirits had approved and gave them their candy. Older kids with buckets of booty were told the spirits were angry; I then asked the spirits "should I give them candy or are you going to make lightning strike?" I them triggered a flashbulb (remember them?) under the sheet.
Probably wouldn't work now in the era of universal magical electronic devices, but it became a neighborhood sensation back then.
What in the holy hell are you doing living there?
Crack garage door 2 inches. Blast 2 hour looped ghost sounds. All the kids loved it that walked by. Cost zero dollars.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Seriously, fuck trick-or-treating. I didn't get any knocks on the door here in the UK and I'm happy about it. Why Americans are so obsessed with Halloween is beyond me.
Yes, I also answer to The Grinch.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
There is a time for each holiday.
Your question was more appropriate than you think.
In my community, there were fliers left on every door requesting that people not hand out candy from their homes due to concerns about children with dietary restrictions and "safety."
A couple years ago we had someone hand out a bunch of similar flyers, except it was a prank by some college students. At least the location they gave for sanctioned fun was a fake address so I don't think too many people showed up somewhere with nothing going on.
Treat it like any other day and grow up.
Yep, treat it like any other day, since as an adult we can dress up in costumes and eat candy regardless of what day it is, plus alcoholic drinks. Don't worry about needing to tell others though, as most people will learn somewhere around college that parties are no longer limited to just holidays and birthdays.
The day after Halloween is a special day. It's the day the Halloween candy and Halloween chocolate is on sale.
Fight for your bitcoins!
What Halloween looks like today.
Fight for your bitcoins!
This year I added some interactive sound effects to the porch using some synths and a Theremin.
For the base soundscape, I used two synths running loops that were out of sync to create a basic gloom-and-doom texture. The first synth (Korg Kaos Pad, using SYN-9 with Pad Motion for the loop) had a low-frequency sound that moved around a bit to create the sonic floor. The other synth (Korg Monotribe) was looping at at the lowest temp setting (maybe 1 Hz?) with a simple noise-based sound with the LFO set to sweep both pitch and filter to create a knocking sound. It was creepy.
For the interactive element, I placed a plastic skeleton on the vertical antenna of a Theremin (Moog Theremini) and set it so it would start "screaming" when kids were about 2 feet away (I initially set a larger radius, but that led to it constantly sounding when kids were on the porch and diluted the effect). A note on the skeleton invited kids to shake its hand
I placed my studio monitors under the table with the Theremin. They had enough bass to let the synth effects sound spooky (rather than hollow). Combined with some lights and the fog machine (fog machines work fine - I just have the cheap one from Walmart), the effect was pretty good. Some kids refused to get near the skeleton after they heard it the first time, but others would play around with it and try to figure it out (the Theremin was covered in a blanket, so it wasn't obvious how it worked).
Next year I plan to expand the set up a bit and add some additional speakers and proximity effects around the walkway.
Fun stuff.
-Chris
I tried to go all high-tech this year. What a disaster! First, let me tell you that when the manual for the revivification table says it needs a bolt of lightning, you can't just substitute wall current. You need real lightning or you don't jump-start the corpse, you just end up charring the internal organs. Right away that puts a requirement on the weather and limits you to working during thunderstorms. And you don't want to deal with a thunderstorm on Halloween night. That keeps all the trick-or-treaters home. It's getting harder and harder these days to lure kids into your basement. Halloween's the one time of year when kids are *supposed* to accept candy from creepy guys in poorly-lit houses! You don't want a little thing like the weather screwing up that chance or you might not harvest enough test subjects to last through the year.
Next year I'm going back to good old-fashioned necromancy, just like we did when I was a kid. Sure, it takes a little longer and the entrails really make a mess, but you know you're going to get an unliving minion out of it instead of just a charred corpse that's too burned even to bother to eat. With necromancy, even if the ritual goes wrong the worst that could happen is you'll end up with an unholy abomination that will try to turn on its creator. Anyone who can't handle that once in a while doesn't deserve to call himself "mad".
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
... a sheet, a black marker, some string, a weight and a LED flashlight.
I think that would make a great levitating, enlightened ghost in the evening.
We have a lot of houses gone to rental or to newer arrivals, sure, but easily half of the neighbourhood was not participating at all this year. Very disappointing.
Our house had a bit of animatronic fun, though, and folks down the road do a really good haunted house walk each year.
Had so many kids this year, many were bused in via Minivan... started at 5:30... I was cleaned out by 6:15... probably 100 kids. Though, lucky for the kids at around 6:30, because I had just pulled a fresh tray of lasagna out of the oven... ..one slice... right in the bag...
In my community, there were fliers left on every door requesting that people not hand out candy from their homes due to concerns about children with dietary restrictions and "safety."
Flyers left by whom? The police, acting under the authority of a newly enacted bylaw regarding candy distribution on Halloween, or a busy-body neighbor who thinks he or she gets to decide how people celebrate Halloween? If its the former, you might want to remember this next time you vote in municipal elections; if it's the latter, send him/her a kindly worded flyer suggesting what he/she can do with the original flyers.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I would suggest using drones for trick-or-treating. You can send out several at a time and cover a lot more houses that way.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
You can always ignore the busybodies and do what you like, you know.
In my community, there were fliers left on every door requesting that people not hand out candy from their homes due to concerns about children with dietary restrictions and "safety."
Hopefully, not everyone obeyed that flyer.
Trick or Treating has just changed since when we were all younger. A lot of parents don't like the idea of kids going up to strangers houses anymore, much less in unknown areas or communities. I've noticed that in a lot of places I lived, most parents seem to prefer community events as opposed to the classic Trick or Treating, and you might just be losing all the kids to organized events instead. For better or for worse this just seems to be the trend, and you can try to buck it, but ultimately the kids are going to go where their parents let them.
If you're in a fairly tight knit community, it may be worth trying to organize something with the other members so that you too can participate a bit in the spooky festivities. For example, once place I was at had the main street shut down for about an hour or two and all the shops participated in Trick or Treating. A few neighborhoods also decided to do their own Trick or Treating as well, but no clue how well that went over. My apartment complex at the time made the pronouncement that the building was "opting out of" Trick or Treating, but someone just wedged the security door open and kids came anyways.
This holiday is like the old Xmas--it's the rich giving to the poor.... really.
Over the years I noticed all my neighbourhood kids don't do halloween in... our neighbourhood anymore. They all hop in their parents cars and head over to the affluent/wealthy areas nowadays for those big bar candies. And those neighbourhood compete with all the candy and entertainment against the joneses... And what more to show off your wealth than build a full Disney-style haunted mansion with animatronics, lights and projections as you compete with other well-to-do skilled folks?
Then they (the kids) hit the parties for sleep overs where the parent hit the clubs for the sexy halloween part. Like we turned this holiday into New Years.
This holiday that once was a community thing is now a freaking show off among those "that have"...
Xmas nowadays is now just the binge shopping phase of the year... much like other countries...
Valentine's day became a noteworthy celebration in my country during the 1980s, mostly because it was a quiet tradition the shops started marketing heavily. Likewise with Christmas decorations for homes, mostly because local councils offered a prize. (When 1 house won 7 years in a row, the ugly side of consumerism was revealed.) Now, the shops are marketing Halloween parties. I think doling out sweets to strangers is against the cultural mindset of my country but that can change in a decade. If this sanitized version of Halloween is exported, I won't have to deal with other people's children and invasive Americanizing of my country's language and customs.
Wait, what happened to "Ask Slashdot"?
And if Slashdot is asking, who is it asking?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The day after Halloween is a special day.
Yes, it is All Hallows Day. Its almost like we have forgotten what comes after Christmas Eve or New Years Eve.
All three were considered important holidays (as in "holy days") once.
Oh god I'm conflicted.
On the one hand I'm sick of the slow adoption of Halloween in my non-American homeland primarily driven by corporations promoting the idea that little shits should come knock on my door and expect candy just because. I'm all for killing that idea before it even starts.
On the other hand I'm equally for collecting all those fliers, finding out which local idiotic busy-body created them and setting them all on fire right in front of their house to prove the point.
> Flyers left by whom?
This part of town is mostly multi-family town-homes serviced by a management company.
The fliers came from the management company.
Zero decorations, one porchlight, a commercial mixing bowl full of candy, and ran out before the evening was over. The Church across the street was doing Trunk Or Treat, and there was a steady stream of kids coming from there and hitting up my house. I feel like I should ask the Church to donate some candy to me next year so that I can meet the demand since my house literally becomes part of their festivity. I'm right outside of a neighborhood, and I used to get maybe one or two kids, but then they built the Church across the street and I got inundated this year. I literally couldn't close the door or sit down.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Walmart is open 364 days per year, 365 on leap years. It's closed on Christmas.
Sat in the entryway with a mask on that had red light eyes. Growled and grumbled into a mic with hidden speakers as the kids walked by. Only highschoolers came up the walk. :-) Little ones walked on the other side of the street. Could hear them talking about me 4 doors away. ðY
We bought a portable firepit and set it out on the driveway, then sat out in lawn chairs to hand out candy.
Much more pleasant than waiting for the doorbell.
Surprising how many kids are wary of approaching a campfire with flames about a half meter tall.
as an adult we can dress up in costumes and eat candy regardless of what day it is
Except owners of public places will tend to treat a costumed adult differently on Halloween compared to any other day.
I thought it was:
Boxing Day - Last minute shopping
Christmas - Presents
Boxing Day - Shopping for deals
There's a pretty bunch of social engineering involved with trick or treaters and one is they go where they go. So the places they go and the people who go there basically is the result of a chaotic process. If you want to prime the pump you need to not only have the houses done up, but on the day get people based on there being people. It's like seeding your case with money while busking or having extra produce while selling produce for the illusion of choice. It's not simply get decorations get destinations, it's actually kind of hard, people tend to go out of their neighborhood to get to the apt places and as such they often go to the same place year after year, so if you got nobody this year, you can't turn it around in a single year. Getting everybody on board isn't enough, you also need to be seen as a place to trick or treat, which means you need people there to get people there.
You might want to give up.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
What I saw this year was if you were giving away something for kids with dietary restrictions then you painted your pumpkin green.
1) Take a garbage bag. Stuff it with loosely crumpled newspapers. Glue streamers to the bottom so it resembles a large spider. Hang it right over the door the kids will be ringing, in such a way that you can raise or lower it. While you're handing candy to kids, release it.
2) Get a cardboard coffin. (I found one at Johnnie Brock's.) Put the coffin out in front of your door (make a platform for it, if needed). Put a small board across the top of the coffin, and put your bowl of candy on top of that board. Put out a sign saying "Take One", and carefully enter the coffin. Whenever somebody tries to take a candy, moan and reach for them, then give out everything. (Hand out the candy if you have to wait too long. Give extra candy to anyone brave enough to try to take candy.) I've had kids give me candy when I do this.
I started with 6 bags - ended up having to rush out and buy 6 more, went through 11 total! Dang there are a lot of kids around here...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
In 2002 I moved into a newly developed neighborhood. We actually did our closing on Halloween. The following year I realized rather quickly that the participation in my neighborhood was rather dismal. At the time, my daughter was born just a little over a month after we closed on our house. A few years later, we found ourselves trick-or-treating in other well-established neighborhoods just to give our daughter the real experiences. I took note that this older neighborhood really went to great extent to give the kids that spooky halloween feel. Some things I noticed were that one person put one of those metal outdoor fire pits in their driveway and burned wood to give it that campfire smell all throughout the neighborhood. The adults handing out treats took the time to also dress up in costumes. There were houses that decorated in full fledged themes with live actors of things link a mad scientist laboratory, etc.
It has taken more than 10yrs to get my neighborhood to come around, but it seems like its on the right track. There are several stuck up retired old people that still screw up the process. Imagine going house to house and seeing a home with yard decorations for Halloween, porch lights on, garage lights lit on either side, sometimes even interior lights lit, only to discover that there's no one home. These people are so stuck on their lights being on to show off their home they don't even realize its implication for Halloween. Honestly, if toilet paper hadn't become so expensive, a healthy dose of eggs and TP would easily rectify the situation.
Just like a neighborhood association, a group of people dedicated to making a kickass neighborhood for halloween requires a community to coordinate. I would recommend mailing everyone in your neighborhood a good 45 days in advance and explain what you want to achieve, where it has gone wrong in the past, and what you think can be implemented to bring about that change. Make sure you ask for ideas to help get to where the neighborhood should be. My advice is to treat halloween like coordinating a big part, wedding, block party, etc. You need lots of other neighbors to decide to do it up too. Once you think you've got something worth going to (if you build it, they will come), contact your local paper to see if they will run a story. Once word gets around, your neighborhood could become one that other kids import themselves to.
Yeah, tell me that you handed out regular candy anyway. I would organize a group to do it old-school and let them sit by their stupid select treats booth.
Claymores filled with skittles instead of shrapnel.
Git them darned kids orf yer lawn whilst maintaining the holiday spirit.
I made a couple animatronic skulls a few years ago (google Scary Terry). Each year I set up a different scene and audio routine. I create the audio in Audacity, so that the left channel drives one skull, the right channel the other skull. Last year the two skeletons were playing chess, covered with cob webs. They bantered about whose turn it was and complained about how long the other player was taking ("I'll be dead before you move"). This year I did the "who's on first skit" and changed it to "who's in the coffin, what's in the urn, ..." It's like a Disney movie - something for the kids and the parents.
An old PC with a 5.1 channel sound card runs a puredata patch. It plays back the audio for the skit on the front speakers (placed in the skeletons) in response to a OSC message from an arduino that detects when people come in the courtyard. It also continuously pays a background low frequency track to the rear and center channels for background ambiance, and throws in a random groan, whisper, or scream now and then.
It has gone over well every year.
You're incorrect, which is bad form when you're being a pedant, which you were.
It's "correct", because while English tolerates rapid and radical changes in common usage, the old uses don't become wrong just because there are newer forms that are also correct. "Thee" and "thou" are still fairly cromulent English, even though you probably say "you" (and you probably use "you" correctly, even if you get "thee" and "thou" and their corresponding verb forms wrong.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Fuck that. Here, have some lactose laden gluten rich crayfish flavoured peanuts.
If you're stupid enough to eat any shit some fuckwit gives you then that's not my problem.
But Halloween wasn't the day before All Hallows Day, it was the first part of it. The English started days at sundown, just as most of the western world did before clocks, and Jewish holidays still do start at sundown.
And All Hallows was an important holiday primarily because it was trying to distract the pagans away from celebrating Samhain.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I have a spider on my front door which drops down when it hears a noise. Can't remember where I got it, but it is great for the little kids - they love to be able to knock and have it fall and scare them. Some even remember it from year to year. It's just a cheapo toy, but it's been the best bang for the buck of any of my stuff.
The other hit I have is a cauldron with fake flames made with silk triangles blown by a fan underneath and a couple of orange lights - like what they do here: http://www.themebuilders.com/e.... Again the younger kids are fascinated with it; it really does look pretty realistic.
Martha Stewart's Creepy Halloween sounds through a bluetooth speaker in a bush adds a bit of atmosphere.
Easter is called Oestara in the Pagan traditions.
Probably can't legally just block vehicular traffic in many neighborhoods, but IMO one of the biggest annoyances and detractors of Halloween fun is a bunch of SUVs carrying Trick'R'Treaters around house-to-house. Discourage driving and encourage walking in the neighborhood. Those wanting to visit a neighborhood with more activity need to go there, park, and walk around.
That said, for a couple of years a neighbor with a tractor and flat trailer loaded it with straw bales and carted a dozen or so kids on the street around house-to-house (at a very slow speed). Aside from the crowds ringing the doorbells all at once, it went very well and those kids, now around 20, still recall how much fun they had.
This year a number of neighbors dragged their metal firepits around to the front and built fires in them, then sat nearby in lawn chairs handing out candy. I plan to do the same next year (include some decorations/costumes, of course). It really encouraged escorts as well as the kids to socialize and have a good time.
I just open the door abruptly and yell. Scares everyone and costs nothing.
No it's not. It's properly called Pascha or Passover, and is a Hebrew tradition. Get it right.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
first we get 500 to 600
I love my smoke machine - get one that's 1000 to 1500 watts about $100 to $130 - I had a cheap 300/400 watt one it sucked!
The fog machine make a noises when it clicks on - a few people jump at that and the fact that fog pours out at them. It also draws their eyes in that direction so that's when you activate your clown popping out of a trash can.
I had people for a block away coming by to see what the screams where coming from
- cheap clown Halloween prop from cvs :30$
- trash can lowes: free - used rest of year for yard pickup
- sprinkler valve 10$
- compressor - don't use pvc between compressor and valve!
- metal pipe and connectors: 10$
- 9 volt battery
- switch
- wire
- some wood for base - attach valve
- some pvc to rig clown so it slides
- duck tape
- string to hold clown from flying out of trash bucket
- set air compressor to about 40 psi
it's a blast!
Remember the old South Park adage:
"Halloween is about Costumes and Candy"
The Costume part is for the coolness factor with peers, the added benefit of maybe winning some candy.
But the real lure is the Candy! Kids scope out neighborhoods well before Halloween, looking at the quality and quantity of decorated houses. If there are too few houses decorated, then that block will be skipped. If the decorations are cheap or too over the top, then the candy is most likely sub-par (over the top stuff usually means a party and hence they don't care about the candy part). Remember the goal for a kid is to get as much good candy as quickly as possible (one good candy bar isn't worth a block of walking, but 4 or five houses in a block are worth it).
So my advice, go with some good middle of the road decorations and put them up early, like Oct 1st. This also helps to encourage neighbors to do the same, meaning kids see it early and put the block on their list of house to visit.
In our neighborhood two neighbors at the end of block start Oct 1st and put up a ton of lights and small decorations all over their yard, from my view it looks like "Candy Land" (ie bright, shinny, but not scary). That isn't my style, I prefer a little scare, but Candy Land works to get the attention of kids and parents.
I usually put up stuff about a week later, mainly black lights with reflectors pointing and stuff I want to glow in the trees (these can be seen from about a block away at night easily), some blinking eyes, some window scene setters (back light to make them pop out at you), a bunch of the foam pumpkins with flicker flame lights, a few strobe lights inside the garage (two or more make a nice effect when they get out of sync), and an old car radio with an mp3 slot (with haunted sounds) wired up to a few speaker I put near the sides of the house. There are some other various things I put up, but those are the basic things to draw in kids. The idea is to be seen for a block or two away. We also try and keep count of how many show up so we know how well we did, this year the count was around 250 (we would have done more but we ran out of candy, 1200+ pieces of it). All in all I don't think I have spent more than $30 for any decoration and most are under $20.
So my advice: think like a kid would, get seen early, get others in the neighborhood to put up something, keep it simple, and give generous amounts of candy.
...and celebrate Guy Fawkes Day instead.
Seriously. Yeah, some kids prefer candy to explosives, but not the cool kids.
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Really? Bunnies, chicks, eggs and all the rest are part of Hebrew tradition?
And there was me thinking that the ancient springtime traditions of Eostre were merely annexed by the later Christian rites.
That's why I put razor blades in my candies. Let it be a valuable life lesson.