For many years, we would get very few trick-or-treaters coming to our door. We could never figure out why.

Last year, the weather on Halloween was very nice, so we left our front door open.

We could see people walking past our house. A few adults with young kids came up, but most of the crowd just walked past.

We heard one group of young teenagers discussing our house from the sidewalk. One of the girls said, “That’s the creepy house!”, and they all continued on down the street.

Our house is a 131-year-old Victorian, so I can see how it might look a little Addams-family-esque, but we have our lights on and a jack-o’-lantern out front, so we’re clearly ready to hand out candy.

At the end of Halloween last year, I said I’d make a sign to encourage people to come to our house this year.

I took a piece of scrap plywood and painted it flat black. Then I covered it with painter’s tape, used stencils to lay out letters, and cut the letters out with an X-ACTO knife:

Thanks to my constant idle YouTube scrolling, I’ve learned that you need to paint over the tape with the background color, so I put a coat of black on.

I painted over that with white.

I painted over the white with two coats of UV-reactive paint.

I went back to the X-ACTO knife to carefully peel away the remaining tape.

As it turns out, I should have put a second coat of black over the tape before I put the white on, but the specks of white that peeked out were easy to cover up after the tape was off.

I attached another piece of black plywood to the back with a hinge to make a stand, and mounted a blacklight on the bottom.

What do you think?

If I had more time (and energy), I’d attach a piece of wood to the base so the blacklight could be mounted a little farther away. However, I’m very pleased with the result.