Scare tactics for your Halloween display

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Scare tactics for your Halloween display

Never mind the Christmas junkies who fantasize about hanging icicle lights on Thanksgiving before the turkey is carved. They've got nothing on the Halloween freaks, in whose ranks, I confess, I am now permanently entrenched.

Long before Labor Day, I was making papier-mache witch heads, shopping online for everything from bat skeletons to glow-in-the-dark rubber brains, and scouring Internet chat groups for tips on how to make soil-less grave mounds.

It started out innocently with a few strings of pumpkin lights. Then I discovered the secondary market in anatomical displays. Medical-school skeletons with misaligned femurs don't get sent to the dust heap. They are marketed to "haunters," as do-it-yourself fright-makers are called.

In just a few short years, after frighteningly extensive Web surfing, I have acquired the Talmudic-like knowledge that distinguishes the haunter from the "stick a pumpkin on the porch and call it a holiday" homeowner. Click here to read the rest of the article...

Mark Harvey