Real-Life Corpse Dressed As Fake Scarecrow
The real person dressed as a fake scarecrow on the porch is an absolute classic. It capitalizes on the mindset of Halloween celebrants to ignore all sorts of intensely weird stuff because, after all, it is Halloween. Only for an overly-excited 53 year old man to spring out of a rocking chair and cause a small child to ruin the bottom half of their ninja costume. Of course, now that it’s a classic, it’s something more and more people expect. That’s why it’s time to add another twist.
A seated scarecrow on a front porch is almost immediately met with a studious eye, thanks to the history established, looking for hints that it might not be all straw, newspaper and denim. So when a visitor spots some visible human skin, they may think they’ve cracked the case, that there’s a mischievous man inside that flannel. But when they walk up for a closer look, they realize that, yes, it’s a real person: a real DEAD person! A genuine cadaver in farmer’s clothes! Did they set up to scare people and then die this very night? Who knows! But that’s a pretty scary porch now!
Related: 6 Real Life Events That Were Scarier Than Any Horror Movie
Anvil Suspended Above Doorway
Here we can start to enter a debate that applies to many horror movies as well: that of slow, carefully constructed dread, versus the easy return of jumpscares and sudden frights. Halloween decorations feel very much the same. It’s a whole lot easier to grab a kid’s leg from a garden feature than to build an environment that inspires the genuine slow fear that lives at the bottom of your spine. This last suggestion is a way to key in on those more sinister facets of the psyche, instead of straightforward fight or flight.
The plan is simple: hang a genuine anvil directly above your front door. Now, you’re going to want to do some genuine research on knot-tying and the tensile strength of various ropes, lest you spend your November navigating a negligent manslaughter case. But it would be hard for even the toughest teen bully to deny getting a little knock-kneed under 200 pounds of cold, indifferent metal, held up by a system they didn’t observe the installation of. It’s up to them whether that bowl of king-size candy bars underneath is worth the fright.
There you have it! Four Halloween decorations guaranteed to put a real dose of fear in any frontyard visitor. And like I always say: I do not assume any legal responsibility for someone attempting to follow my objectively terrible advice!