Backyard Bowling Alley
What You’ll Need
- Hay or Pine Straw Bales
- Ball
- Pins
- Decorations
First up is a Halloween-themed bowling alley in the backyard. To start, set up your pine straw or hay bales in a U-shape to create the sides and back of the bowling lane. Make your own pins by filling old soda bottles with colored water, or you can use tombstone decorations. Whatever you use just needs to stay upright until knocked down with the bowling ball. For the bowling ball, take a basketball and decorate it to look like a jack-o-lantern. To complete the setup, dress up the area around the alley with things like pumpkin inflatables and other yard decorations. For a final touch, add string lights along each side of the alley to light up the lane and enhance the Halloween ambience.
Make your own tombstones to use as bowling pins with our DIY guide.
Chicken Wire Ghosts
What You’ll Need
- Chicken Wire
- Bucket or Box
- Snips
- Fabric
- Marker
- Gloves
- Painters tape
Chicken wire is a great choice for craft projects because it can be easily formed into shapes, making it perfect for creating hanging ghosts for your haunted backyard. To make your ghosts, take the chicken wire and form it over a bucket, box or other object to create a ghost shape. Use tin snips to cut a small piece of wire for a hanging loop and attach it to the top. Next, cut a piece of fabric larger than your wire shape and make a small slit in the center for the loop to fit through. Cover your shaped wire with the fabric and draw a face with a market to finish it off.
Chicken wire can be sharp. Make sure you’re careful when handling it and wear gloves when cutting it. Cover cut edges with painters tape to make sure they don’t poke anyone.
For something more advanced, follow our guide for a different take on a chicken wire ghost.
Brain Toss Target Game
What You’ll Need
This target practice game may seem a little gross — but it’s actually a lot of fun. Kids reach into a bucket of squishy, wet sponges and toss them at a bullseye. We found some textured sponges for an extra weird feel and created an open-mouth ghost target.
To make the target, mark a hole in the center of your project board. Use a drill to get the hole started, then use a jigsaw to carefully cut out the hole. Create three pilot holes with your drill along the top edge of the project board and attach a 2-by-4 with screws. For the legs, arrange pieces of 2-by-4s the way you want them and screw everything together. Paint a classic bullseye target around the hole or give it a seasonal touch by making the board look like a ghost or pumpkin, with the hole as its mouth.
You can keep your target upright or lean it back for a slightly easier game. Then just place your sponges in a bucket of water and you’re ready to play.
Tunnel of Terror
What You’ll Need
For our tunnel-of-terror project, you can really let your creativity shine. Use our instructions to create a basic tunnel structure, then decorate it however you like.
To start, drive your rebar into the ground, spacing them out in intervals to make the tunnel as long or as short as you want. The rebar will be used to hold the PVC pipes in place. Slide your flexible PVC pipes onto the rebar and then bend them into an arch shape. Repeat until you have a series of arches. Drape a large canvas drop cloth over the arches to create a cover for the tunnel. Poke holes in the drop cloth and attach it to the pipes with some twine or rope.
Once your tunnel is set up, it’s time to decorate. Set the mood by placing a Bluetooth speaker inside to play Halloween sound effects and songs, hanging some string from the ceiling to tickle the kids’ faces, and adding a fog machine and a fan to enhance the scene. Additions like glowing pumpkin decorations and pathway markers add an eerie light perfect for the evening’s festivities.
The tunnel is also a great place to hide candy for the kids to find while they’re inside. Or if you’re looking for a way to level up the thrill factor, cut a few small holes in the sides to let kids stick their hands in to scare each other as they walk through.