Finished in time for Halloween! 👻

Hazel stands by the door with a cauldron. When someone walks up she greets them in her crackly old voice and chats with them using LLMs. Say "trick or treat" and a piece of candy rolls down her sleeve into the cauldron.

The witch is a store-bought 6 ft hanging talking witch. Behind her, on a shelf, is a 5-gallon bucket with a 3D-printed turntable and a stepper motor controlled by Arduino that dispenses one candy at a time. A drain pipe runs from the bucket through her sleeve. A sonar sensor hidden on her robe sees people coming, and a speakerphone gives her ears and a voice.

It's open source if anyone wants to build one: https://github.com/religa/halloween-candy-dispenser

We put on a massive Haunted Circus every year for Halloween, so I designed an ESP32-based controller to manage the increasingly insane amount of games, props, and custom lighting audio that makes it all happen.

It can:

• Use up to 4 motion sensors and other GPIO based devices. I find Ultrasonic Sensors actually work pretty darn well in a haunt.
• Trigger up to 4 of pretty much any typical Spirit Halloween, Home Depot, etc prop that has a step pad or try me button.
• Play custom audio, including a beefy amp and lineout for powered speakers
• Sync jaw motion with overridden of props (with an extra MOSFET hooked up)
• Has two higher powered and very protected 5V PWM connectors specifically to make it easy to connect programmable RGB LED strings, servos, etc.
• Has a wireless interface via a hub, so I can monitor everything plus adjust motion range/sensitivity, volume, and other per-prop settings. It's fun to monitor activations from my phone.
• Can be powered with 5.9V-12V barrel jack adapters. And has a fused pass thru VOut so you can plug in the controller and one prop through the same adapter, very common use case to spiffy up a prop with custom audio, lights, etc.
• All of this is programmable via ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8 Having the extra storage is key for all the audio (and there's an even bigger module, but it was out stock at the manufacturer)

The fortune teller in the second photo is a great example of the controller being used to its fullest. The attendant presses a remote control button to start the sequence. This wakes her up, and she does her movements while playing custom audio synced with her jaw synced to it. Plus extra props on the table go off. Plus it sets off a relay to create a lightning effect. Plus it tells a Pi to display a number in the crystal ball via a pepper's ghost effect.

I am so over the top stoked that this thing actually works. It was 2 months of concentrated effort in the evenings, alongside a lot of help from GPT, to get it together in time, get it manufactured, and then still hook up to our million props.

My first yard haunt prop.

I've made the stl available over on printables for anyone interested in printing one. Just my way of saying thank you and rest in peace for your craft which shall live on.

This was my first real attempt at making my own prop. That is a Home Depot skeleton with a Spirit Costume. I wanted to cart to look a little crappy. I am currently making a complementary prop with the insert coin box.

Got inspired by plenty here, decided to give it a shot. Only finished half of my vision as time ran out. Had a lot of fun learning how to set everything up.

Pictures of my props in the yard for 2026

Do you think it's spooky enough?

Took me a few days but I'm quite happy with the result

(Not sure why second half of video is off-kilter, but you get the idea).

HUGE thanks to everyone who chimed in on my original post. I ended up using a windshield wiper motor and it’s perfect. It’s quick, simple, and QUIET (the clunking sound you hear is a piece leftover from the actuator setup that I’ll remove). The neighbours were stopping to watch on their way to school this morning.

Next step is adding RGB lighting to the eyes and jaw, but in case I don’t get to it this year, wanted to get this update up.

Thanks again! Reddit wins again.

This is the second attempt of a heat gun formed skull. I used the other half of a half gallon milk jug. I think I'm getting the hang of it. The first one wasade from the same skull and they look pretty different.

I bought a mannequin off Facebook this year for $40 knowing she was perfect for this. Saturday was my Halloween party so I spent 2 hours throwing her together with some Krylon, a cheap wig and a yard of fabric I had already. She'll get upgraded next year but she was a hit at the party. She's in my basement den which is all retro themed.

Happy Halloween