It’s the spookiest time of the year, and the scariest thing around is how cheaply-made the outdoor decorations from your local Halloween store are. If you plan to put out decorations in October and keep them there all month long until the big night, you can’t have your scary creatures blowing away in the wind. Get some heavyweight Halloween decorations this year with formidably crafted garden statues from Toscano for the occasion. They’ll scare up your garden, your front porch, your lawn, or wherever outside you need them to keep those costumed kids on their guard for a fright all night.
The Monstrous
Gargoyles are said to repel evil spirits with their grotesque features, which we could all use some help with during the spookiest time of year. Even from a distance, their silhouettes seem unnatural and looming to prospective trick-or-treaters, and a lot of detail on a gargoyle’s features suggests that at any moment it might come to life and grab you.
Dragons are fire-breathing, reptilian creatures popular in high fantasy settings and known for their merciless nature when protecting what is theirs. To the untrained eye, there is a lot of overlap between gargoyles and dragons, which is primarily why dragons get to count underneath the Halloween category. You can’t go wrong with the sharp teeth and talons of an obvious predator making your garden its nest, the bones of its last victims scattered on the ground nearby. Only the bravest heroes should be encouraged to walk up your driveway this year to get their sweet treats.
The Undead
Skeletons do the bulk of the creepy-crawly work around Halloween, and it’s easy to see why. When all is going well with your health, no one should see the human skeleton at all, let alone have it walking about with a mind of its own. Chill your guests to the bone with skeletons of all species and sizes on your porch. If you can’t get a whole skeleton, scattered parts are fine, especially if you get creative and half-bury the pieces just enough that it’s still recognizable as bone.
Thanks to the popularity of zombie TV shows, you can now find a zombie version of anything. The best garden statues for zombies are the ones that pop out of the ground, as if the zombie has finally crawled its way to the surface to feast on anyone who gets too close. Accentuate these garden statues with some fresh dirt piled around them, as if they just succeeded breaking through the ground to escape and feed on human flesh.
But zombies are merely the dead that won’t rest. Nothing is more innately frightening than death itself, and there are grave and grim reaper garden statues to help you make your lawn a graveyard. Add a wooden coffin or extra gravestones to complete this look. You can find a lot of fake tombstones with fun phrases on them like, “U. R. Next” and “Rest in Pieces.”
The Uncanny
Black animals are seen as a bad omen, especially birds, which move in large groups and have scary grouping names like “murder.” In reality, none of these animals are actually out to get you, but seeing them in large groups watching you is still unnerving. Ravens in particular are very intelligent animals and historically known to remember individual people and hold grudges. With these garden statues roosting in your lawn, kids will think twice before TP-ing your house on Devil’s Night in fear of retribution.
Space is the final frontier, and we just don’t know what’s out there sharing the same universe as us. That fear of the unknown is the basis of alien-themed scares like beady-eyed gray creatures and unidentified flying objects. Have one crash-land onto your garden and bring out the tin foil hats this year and celebrate Halloween in a way that’s spooky, but not traditionally morbid. This look is best accessorized with luminescent paint, glow sticks, and–if you’re feeling really creative this season–replacing a couple of your lights with black lights to emphasize the glow.
Outdoor decorations are critical to a house with a lot of trick-or-treater traffic, so make sure all of yours are in place and able to handle the elements year after year for some frighteningly good fun.
