Yard Haunt or Yard Display?

Ours is a full-on haunt complete with scareactors. The front of the house is highly decorated, of course, and it's gotten more elaborate year after year. But the only store-bought animated prop we use is that marvelous jumping spider from Spirit. The rest of the stuff sort of looks like the entry way to Party City if you know what I mean. Most everybody's seen it, so not many are going to be scared by it. Most of the props we use I make myself, and they're for the scareactors to interact with as the ToTers (victims! heh,heh,heh) pass by. This year we're adding a corn field to the graveyard that will host a couple of scarecrows - only one is alive, and a walk-though mausoleum that will most likely be totally webbed and house the jumping spider. I found a video on how to make cheap fake cornstalks for the cornfield, so now the living room is filled with them. It's amazing what you can make with some bamboo garden stakes, Hefty trash bags, small Crystal Guizer water bottles, floral wire, raffia, hot glue, tape and spray paint. Rose is making her own scarecrow costume - and a similar one for the real scarecrow that will be standing on the other side of the path from her. Since the theme has shifted from Rose's Haunted Graveyard to Rose's Family plot, we'll also have a scareactor dressed like a 19th century country girl being burned at the stake for witchcraft. For this we'll the witch burning stand prop I built last year. It has a fake fire controlled by a foot switch and it was super effective.

I think of my yard decorations as a display rather than a haunt. I have a cemetery that I walk through when I am not giving out treats. Anyone can walk through my yard and take pictures with the tombstones (they do that a lot) and I have a ghost that flies from one section of the yard to the house and back again. I have a fog machine, some lighting and sometimes I play scary music from a store bought disc. My display goes up on Halloween day and comes back down that night. I am learning to make tombstones but other than that there is not a lot of effort put into it. I don't really think of it as a haunt though because to me a haunt is when people in costume/character are interacting with the visitors and scaring them. It is usually gory displays and trying to scare the bejeebies out of everyone. I think of the people that put a lot of time & effort into their haunts with animatronics, lighting etc and have help to run a "show" or do some kind of theme for thier visitors. I know some people invest a lot of time and effort into it and those are the ones I think of as haunts.I have never actually seen a haunt in person but some of the ones that I see on this site are "haunts" They don't have to be done on a massive scale or cover every conceivable square inch of real estate but it is what actually takes place on Halloween night that differentiates a display and a haunt to me. That is how I think of a "haunt" but everyone's definition is unique.

I go back and forth between the deck and the cemetery at the beginning of the night and as the kids are slowing calling it quits. During the busiest time of the night I stay on the deck.