My neighborhood, and specifically, my block in New Jersey, goes "crazy" for Halloween. Its so much fun. My neighbor/friend across the street, has his whole front yard decorated with life sized, electroniclly motorized, "moving" statues, of horror flick characters. There is Jason, Freddy Kruegger, Hannibal Lector, Frakenstein, and the guy from the Texas Chainsaw massacre, all standing around, with moving arms, and heads. They are SO LIFELIKE, that the kids and adults, going to the house are not sure if they are real people or not.
So, what we do is dress up too, and stand there with the moving statues, and "come ti life", and "attack" the kids. They LOVE it, and run away screaming, and coming back for more. My neighbors, whos house it is, dressed up as a "scary killer clown", complete with balloons and axe, and i was in a very scary "ghoul" mask, and ripped clothes, and "knife"
Then, directly across the street, at my house, we had smoke/fog machines, and flashing strobe lights, all along the front yard walkway up to my front door. I have a HUGE tree in the front yard with spider webs hanging low, and "grapping" people. On my front yard, i even had 2 of my LIVE and REAL cats, one all black, and one dark grey, who "hung out" on the front lawns grass, with all the kids and neighbors. These are 2 out of my 5 cats, dont worry i have a very big home,lol, that dont mind going outside and they LOVE people. They are the perfect addition to a Halloween set-up.
Even my other neighbors, on the right side of my house, get into it, too. They sit on 2 chairs in their driveway, on e person dressed and looking "normal", while the other person is in costume, with a scary mask, but made to look like a "fake" prop, not a real person. Most kids are NOT sure if he is real, as he does NOT move an inch, until the unsuspecting kids come closer to get candy, and he "jumps up" at them. Of course, they are running away screaming, lol.
Its really fun, and besides, us and our immediate neighbors, there are MANY other houses on our block, that are all doing similar things. The fog machines "smoke" spreads out over the whole street. People have "scary" music blasting out their windows. Adults in costume, randomly "waiting" to scare, unsuspecting trik or treaters, all along the whole block, its great. Being that Halloween was on a Saturday, everybody went "all out", even more so, this year, as we were expecting things to go all thru the night. This is exactly what happened. My kids, and all the kids, had a blast. The whole block was one big interactive, scary themed , "world". Kids running, and screaming, adults laughing, and chasing, it was great. Everone LOVED my 2 cats, that were walking around on my front lawn, as REAL, live "props", and the cats loved it too.