DIY Halloween Trail: 2024 Annual Tour

Take a spooky stroll through our 2024 DIY Halloween Trail! See how we built it with creepy props, lights, and frights for a fun annual tradition.

This year was a rough year for me. My dad died of pancreatic cancer in December 2023 and, if you have anyone who has passed, you may be familiar with how you cling to the last few voicemails from them. Well, one of his last messages for me was about my Halloween trail and despite it being a challenging year for me emotionally, I refused to skip the trail this year.

While I didn’t do as much as I would have liked (am I ever satisfied?), we did a lot. I zombified some old lawn ornaments that weren’t looking great anymore vs. tossing them. We picked up a flying witch. The underneath of our platform was themed for Hansel and Gretel. We also put up a tent as a ‘swamp’ which came out GREAT. And we had a vomiting skeleton. It really went well!

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!

2024 Halloween Trail

You’ll be able to see the tour in the video at the bottom, but I’ll share some photos first! I know not everyone wants to/can watch videos when they’re searching for ideas.

The easy project of the year goes to vomiting skeleton in the bath… this took maybe 30 minutes to put together. We put rubber ducks into the green water, ran a pump for the water to come out of his mouth— easy peasy.

Halloween skeleton decoration in a bathtub with green water, rubber ducks, and a pump making it look like the skeleton is vomiting.

Skull heads on sticks was another easy project, although my lights probably needed new batteries this year. The Scouts were practicing their whittling skills so I had them sharpen the ends of sticks for me.

Skull heads mounted on sharpened sticks with Halloween lights in the background.

This year we skipped the traditional spiderwebs which I HATE. We decided to buy a huge roll of butcher cloth and cut it to look like webs. FIVE STARS. It was easy to work with, didn’t seem to catch everything in the webbing, and it came down easy for us to reuse next year.

White butcher cloth stretched and cut to look like spiderwebs decorating a Halloween display.

We took shade cloths down from our animal enclosures and roped them up for one section of the trail. This provided a bit of privacy to keep everyone from seeing the rest of the trail, seeing it loops back around.

Shade cloths tied and roped along a garden trail to create a private, shaded walkway.

Quick project- our graves were looking a bit worse for wear so I used old pallet wood to nail together a cross. Super fast and easy, and I used a bit of white paint for the r.i.p.

Handmade rustic grave cross made from old pallet wood with white painted “R.I.P.” letters.

Then we have the swamp! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the swamp. I need more lasers for next year because I think 2-3 would have been better.

Halloween swamp scene with fog and green lasers creating a spooky atmosphere.

I need to write a whole post about the swamp because it was MUCH more intricate than this photo, but you can get the idea! We hung a lot of stuff for the kids to walk under and through. We saw this effect at the Halloween displays at Hershey Park (which are SO AMAZING) and the lasers make you fee like you’re actually swimming through the water. It’s neat.

Halloween swamp scene with hanging decorations and green lasers creating an immersive, watery effect.

And everything else was leftover from prior years… I didn’t get a picture of our Hansel and Gretel setup (sigh). Check out the video though!

Video Tour of the Trail, 2024

Previous Years

Please share and pin this post! If you make this project, share it in our Stuff Mama Makes Facebook Group. We have regular giveaways for gift cards to craft stores. You can also tag me on Instagram @doityourselfdanielle; I love seeing everything you make!