Cheap, easy, scary Halloween yard cemetery

Every Halloween cemetery need realistic gravestones!

Halloween decorating doesn't have to expensive. Construct a frightening graveyard on the cheap this year using dollar store and household items. Kids will be passing ghosts, witches and other Halloween scares to claim their treats. It's not necessary to break the bank for Halloween decorating. Make your Halloween yard scary by using cheap or free items. trick-or-treaters will be talking about your awesome scary cemetery yard for weeks after Halloween.

 Realistic tombstones

Styrofoam packaging divider rectangles painted with gray spray paint make excellent tombstones. The spray paint will melt the foam in places, making the cemetery tombstones look weathered. Use stencils to spray black paint lettering into the graveyard markers. The letters will be indented and look very realistic. Use a bit of red here and there to represent scary bloody hand prints or drips. Poke bamboo sticks into the ground. Impale the tombstones onto the sticks to keep them upright.

Note: You can also buy fake tombstones at the dollar store.

Hanging spooky skeletons

Buy lifelike white skeletons at the end of the Halloween season on clearance. Use gray spray paint to accent them here and there with an aged look. Tie a rope around their necks and hang them from the trees. To make the rope look like a noose, learn to tie a noose knot or simply wrap a second rope around and around the first.

Lighting the cemetery

The area where the tombstones are can be lit with cheap old lanterns on hooks. To avoid fire danger, use electric tea lights in all lighted objects. You can even put them behind the eye holes of scary creature masks. The path to the house winds through all the scary stuff. Light the path with scary jack-o-lanterns, torches (made from cheap glass votive holders glued to poles) or just the tea lights themselves.

Cheap accessories

String spider web with spiders everywhere. This cheap stuff is one to three dollars a bag depending on size, type and quality. It stretches forever and adheres to most objects easily. You can do a huge yard with two or three bags. Other cheap items are plastic bones, mice or rats. Fake plastic bats can hang from the trees. Consider a black Halloween cat and crows as investments too. All the items except the spider web can be used every year.

Cheap scary creatures

You can make all kinds of scary life sized monsters for the Halloween cemetery in your front yard. Use crossed stakes or double shepherds hooks as the base for your cheap scary cemetery creatures. Dress them in flowing capes or sheets. Slide old rubber Halloween masks over the top of the stake or shepherds hook. The horizontal part of the cross or hook becomes the arms. On a windy fall night, these can be quite frightening.

Live monsters

The best monsters are the adults of the house dressed in scary costumes. Wander about the scary cemetery creating Halloween ambiance for all the trick-or-treaters. Reach into a bowl of slimy eyeballs (grapes in tapioca pudding) and scoop it into your mouth as kids pass you on their way to the front door. Little monsters might enjoy scaring their friends too!

Scary music and lightening

Halloween sound effect CD's can be purchased at most retailers for a dollar and up. These feature creaking doors, howling beasts and crunching bones to name a few. Screams and maniacal laughter will echo through your front yard cemetery. Most party stores carry a cheap strobe light that will mimic lightening in the dark corners of the yard.

Spooky signs and symbols

Those who remember the movie "The Blair Witch Project" will remember the scary human stick shapes hanging from the trees. Make these by tying sticks together with twine. Spooky signs can be made with old wood boards nailed to wooden stakes and pushed into the ground. Write things like "Enter at your own risk" in dripping red paint on the signs.