Halloween Display Happiness - The Lighting - Adventures of a tribal dancer...

I have been posting a lot of photos over on Facebook of our fun, new Halloween decorations this year. It's been a blast to finally feel like we're getting to celebrate in the style we dreamed of! And while I have tried to do it at reasonable costs (and not always succeeding *side eye at 12' Skeleton*), the other challenge is where to store it all in the off season. We have no shed or garage this year, so everything will have to go up stairs and up a ladder into an attic space. This means everything needs to be lightweight, slim, or both.

Early set-up of the graveyard scene.

A graveyard scene seemed smartest. Foam headstones make for both slim and light options. They are also very weather-hardy, if you prep them for windy conditions. Add some fake cobwebs, some old "iron" fencing we had at our old house (can live outdoors year 'round), and some fake skeletons/bones and you have it. Set the scene with a wheelbarrow and a shovel, pile up some dirt, great. Add a fun cemetery sign to greet visitors at the "front gate" and it looks pretty convincing. But what makes it come alive at night? Lighting.

Porch haunt with my beloved cauldron!

Lighting can really add character and depth to an otherwise flat, static scene. A friend on FB asked me what lighting we used, so here is the breakdown of what we did.

In the photo above, you can see a large chunk of the representative lights in our haunt. The simplest and most obvious is a fake flickering LED tealight in the pumpkin. Fun tip: they make some now with remote controls and timers in them. So I have these all over our house and in the pumpkins, and at 6pm when we're prepping other manual effects, I turn them all on a 6 hour timer. At midnight, they turn themselves off, no fuss, no muss! I could set it for 4 or 8 hours as well. I used these in my Hogwart's Floating Candles in our entry way as well.

Hogwart's Floating Candles Illusion, with LED tealights.

Okay, so back to the porch scene above. In the skeleton's hand is a faux vintage gas lantern. You can set them to white light or to a fake flickering flame, the latter of which is what we use. You can even control the speed of the flicker with the dial, which is a pretty cool way to keep two near each other from looking too "samesy". At $20 a pop, it's a decent deal. We know we will get use out of these other times of the year, so it won't just be a once-a-year thing. They aren't smart, unfortunately, so I have to go out at 6pm to turn them on, and go out to turn them off before I go to bed. But the effect is so great. I am very pleased with them, and not at all put out by having to do that, since I have to go out to bring in our weatherproof Bluetooth speaker in each night anyway.

Home Depot Fireblaze light

The green wash light shown here is the Home Depot FireBlaze light. This is also sold at Target at a similar price-point of $30 under a similar name*, though the pumpkin housing at HD was black, and Target was a traditional orange. We opted for the black enclosure. It can be cycled through a number of colors and color combinations using a remote (so no need to go outside to change them or turn them on or off). The lights seem to flow and dance, almost like an underwater effect. We opted for green on this scene, but there are lots of fun options--15 different color combos, in fact--and among them there is even a green and red option that looks Christmas-y if you want to get more use in a given year. I have mine on a smart plug that turns them on and off for me, and they retain "memory" of their last state. So if you left them "on" and "green" last time, it will toggle on and off with the smart switch in that same state. Very handy for automations like ours.

*Note: the same term "FireBlaze" is used to advertise other lights which DO NOT CHANGE COLOR. They are about half the cost, but they will have the color in the name, and will not have a remote option to change colors. So if you want the colors to be able to be changed, don't accidentally get the cheaper, single color option.

The cauldron is one of my favorite projects this year. Following this YouTube tutorial, I was able to turn a huge cauldron (costing only $13 and delivered same day by Party City!!) into a witchy burbling scene. In addition to a fun paint job, there are three different lighting effects at play in this scene.

The wash light from above is a smart, waterproof landscape light I got in a kit from Novostella, on the recommendation of the Hollywood Haunter himself, of VanOaksProps. I used these for purple up-lights on another part of our house, and they will come in handy as landscape lighting year 'round. They can be controlled from your phone via Bluetooth with the free SmartHome app, but you can also buy their hub for it to be even smarter, allowing you to set scenes on a schedule. Given that the hub was literally only $17 more, it was worth it to be able to automate these lights. They come on at 6pm and turn off at 10pm weeknights, and midnight weekends. No hands, ma!

I got four of them for $99 (they are a little over $100 as of this writing, but could have them delivered within 5 hours. Woah.), and while they are LED, they are not low voltage. So I have them connected via extension cords and SockitBoxes, to make them safer to run in all weather. We've found these boxes to be invaluable in the NW wet season, using them on the lights, our blow-up pumpkin on the roof, and various places around our yard to keep regular voltage plug-ins safe from the rain.

A few other lights you may not be able to see very well from the photo, but are definitely helpful for atmosphere, include some prop lighting, and a few more landscape lights. Inside the cauldron is a little mist-maker, also recommended in the Wicked Makers tutorial. It is hard to see from the photo, but in person you can see the mist and burble, and the light is subtle, but another layer of depth. Underneath, the "hot coals" are actually light up. Yep, another one from the Wicked Makers tutorial, this effect is done with orange string lights, "Great Stuff" expanding spray foam, and a few colors of spray paint. The string lights I got have different modes, and I just found one that made it look most light glowing coals. Click here to see a video of the cauldron and coals close up: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rf11HAhgfBuP9jsg6

Glowing coals for the cauldron!

Outside of frame are two other types of landscape lighting, and one effect light. One is our low voltage landscape lights that were part of our house build and are just a soft white. The other are some lights I wanted to use for up-lighting on our trees. Our build budget didn't allow for more than path lights, so these solar landscape lights seemed a decent compromise. There are several different color combinations on these you can toggle them to. Then they are just light sensing, and turn on a dusk and off at dawn. They aren't very bright, but they really do the trick. One is in our back yard already, up lighting a large tree and bird bath. The other three are on our cemetery sign, a copse of small trees, and a headstone.

Finally, I have a lightning effect light, also from Home Depot. Small, cheap plastic strobes which only cost $8 a pop, so I bought two. They toggle between two modes. One is an actual regular strobe, which you can dial to be faster or slower. The other has a bunch of soundscapes--such as evil laughter with electrocution sounds, or howling wolves with a thunder and lightning strikes. Toggled to this position, the lights are synchronized with these sounds, and flash more randomly, like lightning. These sounds are very loud and very repetitive, and there is no way to turn the sound down or off. BUT the more randomized lightning effect that accompanied the sound switched side is what I wanted out of them. So I performed minor surgery on them, disconnecting the speaker, so they only flash like lightning now, no sound! They are rated indoor only, though now that I have taken them apart and could see the inside, I can see that it is more or less pretty weather tight. The front plastic "lens" is probably the riskiest point of intrusion, so I make sure not to point them upward too much, so water can't pool at that point. I have left them out in heavy wind and rain, and they are still going strong. At $8, it's no major loss if they decide they are more sensitive to weather, but so far so good. Since they are the other two manual lights in my haunt, they come in every night with the speaker, to let them dry off. One points toward the copse of trees, flashing off the trunks and branches beautifully. The other points at one of the biggest headstones, which creates a great reflection point for the flashes.

Whew! That was a lot of detail. Any one of these effects added to a haunt would up your game, adding some depth, and possibly "life" and a sense of place to your scenes. If I could recommend one or two lighting additions, I would say the Solar Landscape Lights are an easy choice. No plugs, no wires, no need to turn them on or off. Many color choices, and they have many uses outside of a holiday display. The other would be the FireBlaze Projector lights. A decent price point for lights that move and dance on the surfaces they hit, so it can make flame effects, or spooky ghostly effects, and can look very different depending on what you bounce them off of. Both are designed to be outdoor lights, so you can rest easy about rainy fall and winter nights. I'd maybe suggest you get a SockitBox with the Fireblaze lights, to make them a little safer to run the plugs where you want them in the yard.

Here is a short video showing the whole graveyard scene with the lights, sounds, and props described, as well as our window projections and our inflatable Jack Skellington-esque pumpkin:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/fvzA3PiG7bG5QJWG9

And below is an aggregate list of the links from this post. Happy Halloween!

Lights:

Home Depot FireBlaze projector light - https://www.homedepot.com/p/LightShow-Halloween-Projection-Super-Bright-FireBlaze-with-Remote-15-Programs-21GM25922/315532380

Dancing Flame LED Vintage Lantern, Set of 2 - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Z4TDPDP

Novostella BLink Smart LED Flood Lights - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08WXBQYJN

Novostella Smart Wireless BT Hub - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08WXBLN3G

SockitBox Weatherproof Connection Box - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00274SLK8

Ultrasonic Pond Fogger/Party Mist Maker - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Q3TXYMW

Twinkle Star LED String Lights - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B087FXNP9R

Low-voltage Landscape Lights - https://www.amazon.com/LEONLITE-Landscape-Aluminum-Waterproof-Lifespan/dp/B0897M9TNY

Solar Landscape Spotlights - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YKGQ184

Mini LED Strobe Light (lightning effect) - https://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Accents-Holiday-4-5-in-Mini-LED-Strobe-Light-0305-47004HD/206770871