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.
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I would do the opposite. Play to its strengths and make it creepier with cottonball cobwebbs and such. Get a scarecrow and put a whole head mask on it and have it in a comfortable chair on the porch. Have a duplicate outfit for it and a place to stash it. Wear the outfit and mask sometimes and sit out and see if you can scare the bejezus out of somebody.
The gall of celebrating the explicitly creepy holiday and then avoiding the creepy house, smh
We got into double digits with trick-or-treaters. It’s the most we’ve had in years, so the sign worked!
Yeah those avoidants are such poseurs
It’s Halloween and they don’t want to go to the creepy house? Cowards.
It reminded me of when I was a kid. There was a house at the end of the street that was known as the house where the witch lived. We never stopped there on Halloween, but they also never had their lights on. I also think the “witch” label was earned by how the owners interacted with the children in the neighborhood, but I had no contact with them.
My mom saw the house during an open house when my parents were house shopping and said it was beautiful inside. It had a button in the floor of the dining room that the hostess could press with her foot to let the servants know that they could collect dishes/bring out the next course.
It goes without saying it wasn’t in my parents’ budget even back then in the 60’s.
That looks amazing!
We got into double digits with trick-or-treaters. It’s the most we’ve had in years, so the sign worked!
Whoa, turned out better than I expected. I hope the kids stop by this time.
We got into double digits with trick-or-treaters. It’s the most we’ve had in years, so the sign worked!
They can stop by anytime they want, but they can never LeEeEaAaAaVvVeEeE!
Offer only King size candy bars and see which force is stronger in the years to come
I’d pay actual money for that at a craft fair. Nice work!
Edit: you should totally tell !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world they’d love it
We got into double digits with trick-or-treaters. It’s the most we’ve had in years, so the sign worked!
Not sure if this is dull enough to interest the dullsters. Awesome work!
Beautiful work, but to be fair if I were the tormented spirit of an axe murderer with an unslakable thirst for blood, that’s the kind of sign I would make, too.
Shhh.
Husband use to dress the house up in the 90s and really go all out. Smoke machines, decorations, fancy costume that worked around his disabilities, general cool stuff.
Kids were apparently TERRIFIED but it was the 90s. The parents laughed and told their kids to go get candy lmfao
No kids lately though. Buuut we don’t decorate, his disability is worse and my existence is slow.
We got into double digits with trick-or-treaters. It’s the most we’ve had in years, so the sign worked!
I opened the post to read more about the creepy house. Getting to look at the very cool crafted sign was a nice and unexpected surprise.
We got into double digits with trick-or-treaters. It’s the most we’ve had in years, so the sign worked!
I was making a joke with some colleagues at work about porch pirates being afraid to go to our porch to steal packages. I made an AI draw a picture of my house as a haunted house and it came up with this:
It kept the house mostly the same, but it added clapboard siding where we have brick, and it changed the porch.
The strange thing about it is I really like what it did with the porch better than what we have. Current porch has columns, but this matches the house more.
We also have a picture of the house in a local history book, and the porch the AI drew is much closer to the original look of the house.
Looks great !
We got into double digits with trick-or-treaters. It’s the most we’ve had in years, so the sign worked!
That’s exactly what a ghost would say! I got to the third picture and was like “yeah you’re just making it even creepier”, but the end result is great. The lights will definitely make it more attractive for people to check out.
We got into double digits with trick-or-treaters. It’s the most we’ve had in years, so the sign worked!
I love it. I think you should actually make it more creepy and scary, like having it be running blood colors, or ensure the light flickers in a pattern every 30 seconds or so. It would preserve the spirit of halloween being eerie while still getting across the idea that your house isn’t creepy.
I like the idea of making it flicker. I found a way online that might work without too much effort (or $$).
Someone did it using a simulated flame bulb in a nightlight next to a photo-sensor outlet controller.
I might give that a try.
That sounds neat! Let us know how it goes, because it would be so cool!
Decided not to do the flicker.
Instead I dug my old fog machine out and put that with the sign.
Good news is we got into double digits with trick-or-treaters, so the sign worked.
150 years is so perfectly specific! It’s right on time for spOoOky civil war ghostery!
We got into double digits with trick-or-treaters. It’s the most we’ve had in years, so the sign worked!
HAHAHA! I love that! Well done! :)
Omg I love that!
We got into double digits with trick-or-treaters. It’s the most we’ve had in years, so the sign worked!
