By Kim Boatman
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
A bit of resourcefulness and imagination helps when you're haunting your house. Among favorite sources for haunters are these:
_Halloween and party stores - If you're the plan-ahead type, wait for the after-Halloween sales to pick up scary masks, ghoulish severed limbs and creepy CDs. Cheap and useful are fake spiders and spiderwebs, witches' hats and the like.
_Fabric stores - The Ghoulsville haunters use muslin, painted black, attached to wood frames to create the walkways and space dividers for their house. Also look for black toile, black ribbons and even white toile. You can festoon the white toile with fake spiders, as author Jill Williams Grover does, or use it to create a veil for a creepy bride. Don't be afraid to mix in a bit of color. Grover is adding splashes of hot pink to her Halloween decorations this year. Dangling thread wisps in the faces of visitors creates an eerie sensation.
_Craft stores - Paint is your friend. Spray paint tombstones, candlesticks and brooms. Add accent touches with acrylic paint. Look for unexpected detail pieces, such as a small cherub or doves that can be glued to a tombstone, then spray painted. Spanish moss gives tombstones a neglected feel and makes for shaggy hair when painted black. Invest in a hot-glue gun.
_Thrift stores - Old picture frames, candleholders, goblets and vases can be painted or treated to look creepy. Hats, sunglasses and clothes serve as props.
_Home warehouse stores - Styrofoam makes great tombstones. Duct tape is bound to come in handy. And even a couple of sections of simple picket fencing can be painted black and used to create a scene or to guide visitors. Hang dummies from trees with rope. Galvanized buckets come in handy and can be painted. Steel wool can be used to give a rustic look to your paint jobs.
_Dollar stores - Look for cheap candleholders and other items you can spray paint. Check out the toy aisle for a plentiful supply of plastic creepy crawlies.
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ONLINE
There is plenty to plunder on the Web when it comes to Halloween. Visit the following sites, if you dare:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/curly.johnson/epitaphs.html serves up a smorgasborg of humorous Halloween epitaphs.
www.halloween-online.com offers links to many Halloween sites, including one that specializes in all things coffin-related.
© 2003, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
