30+ Scary Halloween Outdoor Decoration Ideas to Try This Haunting Season

Last Updated on August 17, 2019 by Kimberly Crawford

If you are looking for some spooky ideas for decorating the exterior of your house and yard for Halloween this year, consider one of these creative themes.

When decorating your house for Halloween, you can go beyond the typical decorations and instead opt to give your house an overall theme. Keep in mind that some of these scenarios may not be appropriate for very young trick or treaters. Here are a few to consider:

scary halloween outdoor decor ideas

Famous Horror Movie Characters

Find costumes of famous slasher movie characters, like Jason from Friday the 13th, Freddy Kruger from a Nightmare on Elm Street, Ghostface from the Scream movies, and so forth.

Stuff the costume with clothing or towels to make it look life-like and then place it on a long wooden stake in the ground. Use wire hangers in the sleeves so you can position the arms in a frightening manner. Have a few of them lined up along your pathway or backlit in windows.

Witches Brew

Take three witch’s costumes, and stuff and stake them as with the slasher costumes above. Position them around a large black pot in your front yard. Place an inexpensive bubble machine in the pot (usually under $20). Put large sticks in the witches’ hands making it look like they are stirring the witches’ brew. If you can find a recording of witches laughing, have that playing as well.

Creature House

Pick a theme of gargoyles, spiders, or bats. Get several of all shapes and sizes and place them all over the exterior of your house.

You can have them perched over the top of the door, hanging from gutters and tree branches, on the roof, on stairs, lamp posts, pathways and the front door.

Place outdoor spot lights on them to make them appear even scarier. If you can have the spot lights on a motion sensor, so that they turn on when people walk by, even better.

Crime Scene

Recreate a crime scene by lining your walkway with police tape, drawing chalk outlines on your driveway, playing a tape of screams, even have a fake body lying under a white sheet. A bloody door cover will also add to the effect.

Haunted Mansion

You can create the illusion of a haunted house quite easily. Thunder probes are inexpensive devices (around $25) that mimic the sound of thunder with flashes of lightening. You could also have a CD of organ music playing, cob webs all over the exterior of your house, ghosts in window, and fake rats by the front door.

Window Scenes

If you want something more elaborate and have several front facing windows, consider a classic horror film image in each. For example, you will find a lot of Halloween stores are selling blood covered shower curtains. So you could recreate the shower scene from the movie Psycho in one window with cardboard cutouts of the two characters back lit behind the curtain.

Outdoor Halloween Decor Ideas

#1. Ghost leaf bags

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#2. Packing tape ghost

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#3. Pumpkin arch

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#4. DIY Mummy

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#5. Spider sacks

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#6. Cloaked Ghosts

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#7. Barbie Zombies

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#8. Tomato Cage Ghost

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#9. Spooky house

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#10. Touch Nothing and Nothing will Touch You

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#11. Front door

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#12. Black cat

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#13. Monster mailbox

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#14. Pumpkin man

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#15. Trash bag spiderwebs

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#16. Skull ghosts

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#17. Spooky entrance

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#18. Landing of spiders

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#19. Halloween Campfire

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#20. Hanging ghosts

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#21. Halloween scenery

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#22. DIY Chicken Wire Cheesecloth Halloween Ghost

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#23. Scarecrow

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#24. Wheelbarrow of bones

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#25. Trash bag wizards

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#26. Giant Halloween Spider

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#27. Ghosts Made From Gourds

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#28. Brewing

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#29. Crank ghost

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#30. Ghost costumes

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#31. Enter If You Dare Luminaries

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#32. Zombie planted hands

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#33. Archways

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#34. Spider victim

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