Went over to a friend's house where we are planning a yard haunt sort of thing. This is on a budget so we have to keep spending down to almost nothing and use what we have. That said, we did some good testing of mp3-driven ambient crickets, with additional occasional sounds mixed in--this will create a subtle audio environment out in the farther reaches of the yard that will sound mostly normal, but occasionally there will be ghosts moaning and other effects.

My buddy wants to keep AC power cords out of the yard, so battery-driven speakers are being used to amplify these cricket effects. It works very nicely! I had bought two "Ilove" battery-driven portable speakers for this purpose, and each will output a separate stereo cricket track.

We also did lighting tests to determine how much trouble ambient street light will give us, and these also went well--we can put small colored light sources in the yard, also battery powered, and these will be quite visible. Some blacklight effects that will be visible inside the house will be viewable through the front windows.

Very exciting!