The Roussel Yard Haunt 
Halloween 1998
Allentown, Pennsylvania · sixth year of the graveyard

Every Halloween since 1993, the year we bought this house, our front yard has turned into a graveyard for one night. It started with six tombstones and a sheet in a tree. It has grown a little every year, mostly because I can't leave anything alone. I'm Richard Roussel. I teach high school chemistry, which explains the fog machines. My wife Deanna is a dental hygienist, which explains why we hand out the candy instead of eating it. Our crew: Kelsi, who is eight and keeps the official count, and Kyle, who is five and has been a pumpkin for three years running because he refuses to be anything else.

The Haunt in Pictures
Click a picture for the big one. Deanna took them on our 35mm with 400 film and no flash where she could help it.

Dusk. The stones at a quarter past five, porch light on, jack-o'-lanterns lit, waiting for dark.	Lights and fog. Green on the left of the walk, purple on the right. The ghost glows.
The Butler. Me, just before five, with the first customer of the night reaching in.	The coffin. Pallet wood, red lining, and a hand that wants out.
Customers. A ghost, a box robot, a witch and a hobo heading up the walk. Homemade costumes get double candy. House rule.	The morning after. Every stone still standing and one wrapper on the sidewalk.

About that last picture. 312 kids came through this yard and the only sign of it the next morning was one candy wrapper on the sidewalk. Not one tombstone kicked over, not one stolen, six years running. I'm not proud that the floodlights and the pumpkin lights are still on in it. I went to bed at eleven and forgot to unplug anything. The pumpkins have little battery lights in them these days, since the year the wind blew out every candle by seven o'clock.

The Props, and How I Built Them

Tombstones (20). Cut from 2-inch foam insulation board, the pink or blue kind from the lumberyard. I cut the shapes with a homemade hot-wire cutter: a length of nichrome wire stretched on a wooden bow, heated by an old model-train transformer. It goes through foam like butter. Cut outdoors with a fan behind you. Hot foam smells terrible and you don't want to be breathing it. Rough the edges with a rasp, carve the epitaphs with a wood-burning tool, then paint. Use latex house paint, not spray paint. The solvent in spray paint melts the foam into a gummy puddle. (Chemistry. Ask me how I know.) Base coat gray, then sponge on darker gray and a little green for moss. Two wooden stakes glued into the bottom of each one hold it in the lawn.

The ghost. Cheesecloth dipped in a mix of liquid starch and water, draped over a foam wig head set on a two-liter bottle, arms spread on coat-hanger wire, dried overnight in the garage. It comes off stiff and holds its shape. Hung from a maple limb on fishing line so it turns in the wind. Under a green floodlight it glows.

The coffin. Two shipping pallets taken apart with a pry bar (that's the hard part), cut to the old six-sided shape, nailed together, stained dark walnut. Lined with a remnant of red satin from the fabric store and a staple gun. The lid is on hinges and propped open on a stick. The skeleton hand came from the party store. Kids stare at it for a long time waiting for it to move. It never moves. That's what gets them.

The fence. Lattice strips from the lumberyard, painted flat black, along the sidewalk. It keeps people on the walk and off the stones.

Fog (2 machines). Two small fog machines from the party store, hidden behind tombstones, run on store-bought fog fluid. Only store-bought. I have had a good many students ask me how to make their own. Don't.

Lights (6). Outdoor floodlight holders on stakes with colored flood bulbs, three green and three purple, aimed low across the lawn so they light the fog and not your eyes. All on one outdoor-rated extension cord with a ground-fault outlet, because wet grass and electricity are a bad combination.

The Butler. One thrift-shop tuxedo, white cotton gloves, clown white for the face, gray and purple eye shadow borrowed from Deanna, and most of a jar of hair gel. The Butler stands at the foot of the porch steps with the candy. He does not smile, he does not speak, and he bows to every single child. Kyle stands next to him in the pumpkin suit and says "Happy Halloween" for him.

The Rules

1. Scary is for the big kids. The front walk, through the fog and past the coffin, is the scary way in.
2. The driveway is the no-scare lane. It's lined with flashlights in milk jugs, no fog, no Butler, and Deanna at the end of it with her own bowl. Little ones, and anybody else who wants it, take the driveway. That was her idea, in 1996, and it's the best idea anybody ever had here.
3. Nobody gets touched. Ever. Nobody jumps out, nobody chases, nobody grabs.
4. If a little one cries, the fog goes off and the porch lights come up. No questions.
5. Neighborhood kids get a daylight tour at four o'clock, before the lights go on, so they know it's just foam and Mr. Roussel.

Candy Math

Two pieces a kid, and 312 kids, is 624 pieces. We bought 18 big bags, which should have been close to 700. Allow for a pair of brothers who came back three times in three different costumes (they got candy all three times; that's commitment), allow for the Butler's assistant (Kyle) eating his share, and you run out at 8:40. The porch light went off and the Butler took his bow. For 1999 the order is 24 bags.

Plans for 1999

The plans are drawn on a sheet of plywood on the garage wall, and Deanna has asked that they stay there:

• A crypt front for the porch: plywood and foam, painted like stone, with the front door as the crypt door.
• A second coffin, standing up, with a lid that opens a crack.
• Eight more tombstones. Kelsi is writing the epitaphs. They are very clean and very bad puns.
• A strobe in the coffin.
• Dry ice in a cooler with the fog to make it hug the ground. (Gloves, tongs, open air, and kids stay back. That's the chemistry teacher talking.)
• Kelsi has applied to be the Butler's assistant. The Butler is considering it.

Halloween is coming 35 days October 31 falls on a Sunday this year, and the city hasn't said yet which night trick-or-treat will be. We'll be ready either way.

Souls who have wandered through since November 1998:


Building your own haunt? Questions about props? Write the Butler:
[email protected]

Last updated September 26, 1999