A Yard to Die For

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By Cynthia Hand Neely –

Agrisly graveyard can lure gobs of ghouls to your manor this Halloween if you have the spirit. With a little originality and added realism, store-bought props can rise above the ordinary.

Haunting Tombstones

Make typical foam tombstones thicker. Using only glue meant for foam, glue two identical designs back-to-back. When the glue is dry, give it more “age” with a drizzle of water tinted with acrylic paint. Fill a spray bottle part way with water and add a few drops of rust colored or deep green paint. Shake to mix. It should be transparent in strength. Outside, lightly spray the top of your stone allowing the water to run down and leave streaks on all sides. Let dry and repeat until you like the results. Decrepit is your goal.

Size is better than quantity when it comes to gravestones – think large.  Once planted in your yard, the prop that looked so nice and big in the store can look pitifully puny when dwarfed by your lawn’s expanse.

Arrange tombstones as they would be found in an ancient, derelict cemetery. Some should be crooked and others facing different directions. Pile pine straw, leaves and sticks in mounds where the bodies would be buried.

Spooky Spider Webs
Instead of the usual packaged spider web product that looks like spun cotton candy, try Spanish moss, the gray moss that dangles from big oak trees in iconic southern plantation photos. It’s available, dried and packaged, in floral departments at hobby stores. Just pull it apart so it is stringy and loose, then drape from low-hanging branches and everything else for instant creepiness.

Eerie Epitaphs

Personalize your dead zone with original epitaphs. If you can’t find gravestones with plain fronts, flip and use the blank backsides. Paint family names like “Reserved for (your name here)” or comical epitaphs such as “Here Lies Little Randy, Ate Too Much Candy.” Be sure to use acrylic paint, because oil-based paint will eat through the foam, dissolving it into a mess.

Other Frightening Accents

A real shovel propped at a grave, full-sized skeletons posed with fake ravens on their shoulders, lanterns with battery-operated candles and a fan blowing your fabric ghosts accent this final resting place.

Whether you hire someone to create your display or dig your own, no graveyard is worth its bones without accent lighting. Simple, colored spotlights in green, blue or purple, staked in the ground, do the trick for treaters. Beware of electrical cords that could be a tripping hazard. Aim lights into tree branches, point a few at the tombstones and skeletons, and when darkness falls, you won’t need a full moon for your Halloween decorations to dazzle.