It doesn’t.
There was one video I saw where literally, it was nothing but an empty field with thousands and thousands of store-bought animatronics laid out in a maze, plugged in and some idiot walking from one to the next, activating them for the camera. It was just a cacophony of noise, with no rhyme or reason how they were laid out. Clowns next to werewolves next to aliens. It didn’t matter.
I appreciate that they put a lot of money into it, an absurd amount in fact, but they put zero effort into their display. Any idiot willing to max out their credit cards could do what they did. It had no soul.
Our Halloween display isn’t massive, but it’s personal. Everything we do, we build, mostly from scratch. Anything store-bought that we use, we modify. The layout tells a story. It’s designed to get a reaction. It’s made to entertain, not just overwhelm the senses. Most people don’t bother at all, but come on, if you’re going to, at least try!
This year alone, we rebuilt all of our graveyard fences. They were old and ugly, not in a good way, and they were developing splinters and the paint was just falling off, so I entirely rebuilt them from scratch. I saved the old pickets, sanded them all down, made them safe and then aged them again, so now we have fences that will last another decade or more. I finally made a new column to hold a projector for an animated display that shows on our garage door. We’ve just had it in a plastic bin, turned upside down to save it from the elements. There’s almost never rain around Halloween, but we use it for Christmas too when the weather is nastier. No more.
We bought a new projector and scrim for a new video show and I’ve refit some of my hand-built animated props that have been less than reliable for the last couple of years. Now they’re rock-solid. I’ve got a new breathing grave in the works and our regular columns are being completely redone because I was never happy with how they looked. Now, they’re being aged with custom brickwork and should look much better.
I don’t go out and buy off-the-shelf crap. Skeletons, yes, then they get modified. I think I’m getting another 3-4 of them this year, as soon as they show up in the stores, which should be any time now. We’re completely redoing our gravestones out of 2″ foam, with brand new bases which should be much more stable than the old. We decided after last year that it just wasn’t working and those got disposed of, all of them except for one that’s got a grave popper mounted to it and that will have to be taken apart in preparation for switching over to the new setup (which I have now done). I’m waiting until the new gravestones get carved before I worry about that because they’re bigger and better than ever before.
We don’t ask for money for our display. We do it for the kids and the families. We do it because it’s fun. All of the garbage that you see in stores, it’s just cheap Chinese crap that will fall apart in a stiff wind and costs 10x what it’s worth and it’s all ugly to begin with. Hard pass on the cheesy built-in audio and the janky, jerky movements and the all-plastic construction. I build my stuff to last. I take pride in what I put out on display. I make something new and interesting every single year and watching the kids’ eyes light up when they see it, that’s what makes it all worthwhile.
I wouldn’t bother if Halloween was just a credit card exercise. I could do that, but I’d be embarrassed to. I care about the work. I care about the effort. I care about the kids and their enjoyment. Too bad most other people don’t.
