Fright night: 7 scary Halloween prop and costume ideas
Frightening little children is one of the sublime pleasures of the Halloween season. For 364 days of the year, you can get into a lot of trouble doing this. But on October 31, it's your right—your duty, even—to scare the bejeezus out of neighborhood trick-or-treaters before you hand over that candy.
Now is the time to grab up those Halloween decorations and electronic gadgets. It's late enough into October that prices are coming down, but still early enough to get scary props, costumes and gadgets delivered and deployed for your party, your porch or your lawn.
Grave Ground Breaker
It's like my grandma used to say—when Halloween rolls around, it's always nice to have an army of the living dead clawing their way out of your lawn. This Grave Ground Breaker figure is relatively inexpensive and you can pose the arms to give multiple skeletons different looks as they rise from the grave. Buy them by the dozen if you really want to get into the spirit of things.
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Twitching Corpse
Animatronic Halloween figures are effective and scary, but also typically quite expensive. They're good for a kind of centerpiece option when you're populating your haunted porch. The price isn't too shabby on this frightening Twitching Corpse, which can be triggered by infrared sensor or pressure pad. When your target trick-or-treater gets within range, the full-size (72") model twitches and flops with light-up eyes and sound effects.
Clown Head
Here's the math: Clowns are scary, corpses are scary, and decapitated heads are scary. So you can't lose with a clown corpse head, right?
The 10" model comes with hook and rope for swinging your bloody clown head down upon unsuspecting visitors, giving you some extra options for booby trapping the porch or front door.
Scary Toilet
When throwing a Halloween party, it's the little details that count. This Zombie Toilet Seat kit is simple and direct—it's a vinyl cover for your commode with bonus blood drip panels for the tank. It's also a nice little surprise if any of the neighborhood kids has the audacity to ask to use your bathroom.
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Tapping Peeper
Here's an appealing prank option for more ambitious Halloween rascals. The Scary Tapping Peeper attaches to any window—from the outside—and suspends the image of a creepy guy / serial killer looking through the curtains. The motion activated finger will tap three times whenever anyone passes by inside the house, or it can be set to tap at determined intervals. Devious! Yahoo Shopping is not responsible for any ensuing litigation.
That's My Face!
Genuinely high technology occasionally comes to the service of Halloween festivities, and that's the case with this wearable custom mask. Send a photo to the mad scientists at ThatsMyFace.com and you'll get back a wearable plaster mask made from advanced 3-D imaging technology. As such, you can wear a Halloween mask of your own face—very meta —or of anyone else's. The masks are so lifelike that they've been able to fool facial recognition software.
Cyclops Mask
For less expensive techie mask options, consider swinging by MorphSuits.com. A few years back, former NASA engineer Mark Rober left the space agency to found the company, which specializes in tech-savvy Halloween costumes. This Cyclops Mask, for instance, incorporates your smart phone to project an image of a roving eyeball—you just trigger the included app, slide the phone into place, and you're set. The company offers dozens of variations on this theme, using your phone or tablet.
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