Join the 2025 Halloween Trail Annual Tour! Experience spooky decorations, creepy setups, and festive fun perfect for families and Halloween enthusiasts alike.
I’ve been running this Halloween trail each year with two friends of mine. We set up a spooky trail in the woods on my farm for the kids to walk through.
I think this will likely be our last year, unless I do it for grandkids or for other young kids that I know. Our kids are aging out and it’s quite a bit of work. I don’t think I can pull off a trail that’s impressive enough for 15-year-olds.
This post may contain affiliate links which may earn me commissions should you click through them and take certain actions. As an affiliate for Amazon, Cricut, xTool, Home Depot, and other sites, I earn from qualifying purchases. Please DIY carefully. View my full legal disclosures here.
Please read the whole post so you don’t miss any important information!
Video Tour
Changes for 2025
I had a couple of additions this year. I added the hearse and pony from Home Depot, as well as the fisherman in the rocking chair. Both were excellent additions. The hearse and pony sell out every year so I stalked the site on the day of release. I’m surprised the fisherman hasn’t been selling as well.
We also decided to skip doing trick or treating along the trail. Instead we had a bag of treats at the end of the trail. This was a hard sell though because the kids were used to getting a lot more candy.
I LOVE the 100-piece treat bags that I purchased though. They had dog ears to tie together so they were easy to close, and I filled them with a variety of snacks and treats from Costco.
But I wanted everyone to be able to enjoy the actual trail- not to be trying to sniff out each candy zone. I felt like the older kids ended up taking a lot more candy and a lot of the younger kids wouldn’t see the candy spots because they were nervous. This seemed like a better situation, but I wish I had done it this way all along.
Photo Walkthrough
To get onto the trail, we had everyone walk behind the white shed (right). We had a projector on the white shed’s wall.
Ahead, we have the axe hanging with a dropping mechanism. This, along with most of the animatronics on the trail was setup on a remote that I could control as people walked through.
Read my post about setting up remote operated props.
To the right of the axe, I setup a pyre and a skeleton on it. Red lights under it were intended to make it look like a witch on fire.
The graveyard was next. I made the graveyard archway a year or two ago.
Spider Area
A few trees ended up falling down in the woods this year and I decided to use this triangular zone to create a spider lair. The crisscrossing branches made it easy to hang the webs from them.
I added my hanging corpse in webbing, as well as this set of three spider egg sacks that glow purple.
Ghost Area
The ghost area is pretty minimal but we have an inflatable ghost and a few ghost decorations that can line the pathway.
I also have some hanging witch hats right before you enter the witch area.
Witch Area
The witch area is just the giant witch with quite a bit of lighting. I added a couple of upcycled containers as well, labeled with witchy type spell ingredients. I also saved some bones from chicken and cleaned them off to put them in one of the jars.
Doll Heads
As always, I used my doll head lights to line the pathway.
Doll Area
Last year we did something different with the dolls, but this year I wanted to do a nursery type setting.
I 3D printed a skull baby mobile and painted it to look nicer. I am adding a cheap crib that I found at the thrift store for our second trail date this year.
I try to generally use items that can be left outside because we do two different dates and I hate cleaning up between them. So we have a tricycle, and a small rocking chair.
Tricycle has a skeleton on it with a baby doll in the back cubby.
Zombie Area
We do mostly the same thing with the zombie area each year. Green light shining underneath the pallet and a zombie animatronic hanging out on top so it looks like it’s crawling up through the pallet.
Prisoners
These prisoners are just hanging around on some logs with their pooch.
I added the balls and chains this year.
Death Penalty Area
This is the electric chair that I built a year or two ago. Love it, but it’s starting to fall apart a little bit cuz we left it in the woods. I do not have storage for all this stuff.
I wanted to conserve my skeletons so I ended up taking the prisoner costume and stuffing it with leaves. Then I used a skull in the head. Meh.
It was pretty obvious during the daytime and didn’t look great, but at night it was fine.
I also used faux barbed wire for in front.
Horse and Hearse
This was a purchase from this year and I freaking love it. Unfortunately, this sells out very quickly generally so I stalked the website to get it on release day. It’s the giant pony + the hearse is sold separately. The skeletons come with it though. There’s three different areas that light up or talk.
Heads on a Tree
Last year we put these heads on sticks in the ground to line the path. There are some little lights inside.
This year we just popped them on a tree. It looks pretty good.
Fisherman & Swamp
The fisherman was my other big purchase this year and I really like him, although I’m a little nervous that he won’t store well. I really don’t want him to get destroyed.
We did a swamp with a green laser and a fog machine. This effect works much better if it’s in a contained area like indoors so we added lots of tarps around the platform in our woods to try to get that effect.
Inside that area, we had a bin with bags of candy and a few small decorations.
After that they left. It was hard this year because the kids are starting to get too old to appreciate it as much.
Every year I love seeing this come together and it’s like magic to me.
But it’s a lot of work. In future years, I plan to reuse most of these decorations in my front yard to decorate still. I just won’t be doing the big trail.
Here are some of the final photos from the trail at night. Make sure to check out the video as well.
Please share and pin this post! You can also post your project and tag me on Instagram @doityourselfdanielle; I love seeing everything you make!
