Outdoor Halloween Decorations

When night falls, a cast of creepy characters can help turn your yard into a landscape that's equally frightening and enchanting.

Welcome trick-or-treaters in hair-raising style by turning your front porch into a bat cave with just our template, thick black paper, and painters' tape.

Decorate your porch with a flock of ravens and crows who swing on perches made from cardboard tubes. Use our template to make a hook-beaked bird, or create a species of your own design.

Set out a few tombstones in your yard and let them work the graveyard shift on Halloween. These are made by trimming gray paper bags. They bear an eerie resemblance to real gravestones when lit with mini lights.

Hang these easy-to-make cheesecloth ghosts from tree branches and porch railings to create a haunting Halloween scene.

Creating your own googly-eyed monsters has never been easier. Just don't get too close -- these guys look hungry.

You can carve just one frightful tombstone or enough gruesome grave-marker pumpkins to haunt an entire cemetery. The more, the scarier.

Make a pair of wide-eyed owls using our template and card stock to guard your front door. To make their perches, you need only a few bare branches from a crafts store or your own yard.

This giant spider queen in a larger-than-life web is brought to life with just a few party-store supplies. She dangles near the entryway in her enormous web, waiting to snare her prey.

These multilegged creatures rise up from the damp earth and moss to skitter across cold stones.

As dusk sets in, these creatures of the night stir from their resting places, and the ghouls come out to play.

Light up your doorstep with lovely luminaries made from seasonal gourds.

Don't be shy: Show off your top-notch collection of bodiless heads by placing them atop pedestals. You can put the display next to a stair railing or adjacent to a walkway outdoors -- in fact, anywhere you think a leering head would be a nice decorative touch.

Trick-or-treaters and Halloween guests should feel more welcome than wary ascending a staircase lit up with leaf-carved pumpkin lanterns.

Make a trio of creepy-crawly spiders with plump balloon bodies and spindly legs to hover over unsuspecting trick-or-treaters.

Plants that are past their prime can be simply bewitching on Halloween. Their imperfections -- the dramatic shapes, colors, and textures not found in just-bloomed plants -- are part of the appeal. To create this arrangement, we tapped our gardens for rose hips and seed heads from coneflowers and asters. See what catches your eye in your yard.

If you have a birdbath in the yard, cover it with dead leaves and branches to provide a cozy nest for a family of jack-o'-lanterns.

Suspend a steaming pumpkin from long branches to form a wickedly creepy cauldron.

No need to worry that these mushrooms are poisonous. They're made from crown pumpkins and butternut, delicata, and carnival squashes.

Welcome trick-or-treaters to your door with this friendly-faced scarecrow.

Pumpkins are thick-skinned, but it's easy to poke through them for a new take on decorating. Here, two miniature pumpkins become a wise owl. Secure pumpkins together with skewers. For eyes, push toothpicks through the tips of two pumpkin seeds, insert in pumpkin, and fan out slightly; repeat several times. A pearberry completes each. To add a chrysanthemum plume, make a hole with a toothpick and insert stem. For the beak, dig out a small opening and wedge in an almond.

This once-upon-a-midnight-dreary wreath was created using silk flowers, then sprayed a raven hue to give trick-or-treaters a wicked welcome.

Legend has it that the luckless souls who hear the Three Squashes' song of woe shall vanish into the nearest vegetable patch, never to be seen or heard from again.

See More Funny-Face Pumpkin Templates

Feeling mischievous? Rig up rubber spiders to rise and fall before trick-or-treaters as you open the door.

Two brooms wired together form an unwelcoming decoration on the witch's front door, which also has a border of little broom heads (bundles of raffia).

Mound earth to look like newly dug graves and set out a few of these tombstones for a deathly welcome.

Assemble a tableau straight out of a spooky movie. The animals in this witch's latest shipment seem to have escaped their crates and are inhabiting these ghostly green pumpkins.

These scary shrubs will terrify anyone -- or anything -- that dares tread past.

John Keats called fall the season of mellow fruitfulness, a sentiment evoked by this string of warm-colored gourds.

Create a welcoming -- or menacing -- walkway for trick-or-treaters by lining your front path with glowing jack-o'-lanterns.

Add fangs to these slithering creatures, and drape them down your stairs or wrap them around pumpkins.

Beware the menacing pumpkins who go bump in the night.

Rooms go fast in these cozy, critter-filled pumpkins, which offer a shudder-inspiring alternative to traditional carving motifs.

The front-door welcome sign is "spun" with chalk on a crafts-store blackboard in a ready-made frame; sticking plastic spiders onto woodwork with weather-stripping tack prevents damage to the finish and allows for easy removal.

Light up your porch with both frightening and friendly glowing pumpkin faces.

No one but the bravest trick-or-treaters will dare tread on your doorstep while this aging, spider-infested wreath hangs over it.

Who knew a benign pumpkin patch could yield such otherworldly creatures? Assume the role of Dr. Frankenstein this Halloween, and create your own monster, using stacks of pumpkins, gourds, and squashes. Only the heads need carving; if the bumpy body parts don't sit squarely on each other, level them with a serrated knife, then use toothpicks, pushed into the flesh, to assemble them. Before attaching the head, insert a low-wattage light bulb, and plug it into an outside socket or heavy-duty extension cord.

Set an ominous scene with these monstrous birds, who greet visitors in the form of window silhouettes.

If you'd like to construct a beast as large as this, consider throwing a pumpkin-carving party where each guest works on a different segment of this serpent.

These luminarias are perfect for lighting the way to your front porch, on Halloween or for any fall party.

Kids will love re-creating their own family in the form of stacked pumpkins.

Plain brown-paper bags spell danger for arriving trick-or-treaters or Halloween party guests.

This sinister sorceress and her trio of menacing felines are in a black humor -- all the better to give guests a start when they arrive at your home for the festivities.

These patient creatures of the night may lurk around unsuspecting trick-or-treaters.

The owls' extra-large eyes are made from halved miniature pumpkins and gourds. Their feet and ears are curved pieces of pumpkin.

When cold weather arrives, gourds, winter squash, Indian corn, and small pumpkins can fill the planters that once overflowed with flowering annuals; tuck some colorful leaves into any gaps. There's no better way to capture the spirit of the fall harvest season.