Where are all the Undead in the Front Yards?!

Ahhhhh.... The Season of the Dead is kicking off quite splendidly! Just last night I recorded my second Pod of Geekdom, with my special guest, Roberto DelAmorte, on the subject of Haunted Attractions as well as other spooky stuff. Then tonight there are plans to explore a Haunted Corn maze, a Haunted House AND a Haunted Trial! Add to that the fact that moon shall shine brightly this evening! We'll surly be tempting the living dead and lost souls this evening. Bruahahahaha.....


And speaking of the Halloween season, one thing a love to see around this time of year are the wonderful and creative yard haunts that pop up all over the nation. Sadly, within the last few years, good yard decoration sightings have been slim to none around my neck of the woods. Either people are becoming less and less creative and imaginative or perhaps people are afraid of what the neighbors will think. Either way, this town needs a good Halloween filled enema to flush out the mediorcre mentality.

On my ride to and from work, I pass plenty of houses that could do a wonderful job of putting up some undead fun in their front yard to give trick-or-treeters, or passers by, a good laugh or scare. If you're not sure as to what I'm babbling on about, I'll spell it out for you. In years past, during Halloween season, I'd tool around the local neighborhoods and always come across at least two or three front yards where the home owner would put up a fake graveyard with ghosts and ghouls and all sorts of cool spooky stuff. So far this year, I've seen bupkiss, nada, zero, zilch. The coolest thing I've seen so far this year is a circle of ghosts standing around a tree. That's all.

Where are the haunted graveyards with corpses coming out of the ground? Where are the homes with fake facades to look like a castle, or a haunted house? Where are the multitudes of grim grinning Jack-O-Lanterns? Nowhere, I guess. Has something evil come over the neighborhoods of my town and sucked all the imagination out of the brains of the local yard haunters? What's going on?
Perhaps they need to step back in time and remember an era where the yard haunt was a thing of dark beauty to treasure. I can recall a huge yard haunt not too far from where I lived. The front of the house had a fake facade that looked like an old gothic castle. Within it's front door, there was the head of a giant, animatronic dragon that would interact and talk to those that visited at night. That's not all, there was a dangling corpse hung from a tree, a giant spider that would jump out at visitors as well as an undead soul rising from the grave. I haven't seen that set up in a few years.

Then there was an entire street on the southwest side of my town where most of the neighbors put on an entire avenue of terror where nearly every other house had some big Halloween display or yard haunt. I believe it was called something like, Halloween Hollow or something similar. I remember there was one front yard there that had a couple of hearses set up and some "dummies" of ghouls standing in front of them. When spectators would move in for a closer look, the dummy would suddenly reveal itself to be alive and jump forward. This would cause a lot of underwear to be stained. This was over a decade ago and, as memory serves, I believe that salty, soul less neighbors, along with a few corrupt law makers and ignorant local aldermen, put the old "We Hate Everything Good and Fun" keebosh on the whole haunted block party. Sons of beeeeotches!

When I was a young lad, I'd usually do up my family's front yard to look like a small grave yard during the trick-or-treat hours.. The very early incarnations of it were pretty pathetic with cardboard cut out monsters and bright white foam gravestones. But, over the years it got slightly more sophisticated with dummies that had cool corpse masks for heads coming up out of the ground. The gravestones got a decent paint job with spooky inscriptions on them. Spooky music would come out of a hidden boom-box. I'd always try and do a little something. How could I not?

And that's the question running through my mind. There are a lot of creative people out there who love Halloween. Where are they and what are they doing to their front yards this year? C'mon, people! Let's get the undead party started already!!!!!


Hey, expect some reviews of the Haunts I go to tonight being posted here soon. Also listen for the next Zangz's Pod of Geekdom (now with a Flashplayer option!) to be posted within a week or so. It features more on Haunted Attractions PLUS a special guest. One of my Haunt-going friends, Roberto DelAmorte!

Until next time, "There coming to get you, Barbara."

Zangz.