This was something my dad used to do when I was a kid. Next year when the kids will remember the person in the scarecrow, it will actually be stuffed, and I'll be hiding somewhere else!
View from a little further away, my husband was hiding behind the screen door controlling a spider that dropped from above ๐
[Image description: nighttime view of the front door of a house decorated for Halloween. A scarecrow sits on the porch with a large spider hanging above. In the foreground is a dark hooded mannequin, with swirling fog.]
When I was a teenager, I took my dad's old Vietnam helmet liner, a sheet, and a bag of rocks for ballast, and made a ghost out of it. Then I strung a piece of clothesline from the top of the porch across the driveway, and up into a tall tree, at maybe a 30 degree angle down from the tree. Hung the ghost from a pulley on the clothesline, and had another length of line loose attached to it.
I just stood in the crook of this cottonwood tree waiting for kids to come. They'd get their candy, and I'd let the ghost go. So much screaming. Reel it back up and wait for the next group of kids. The only part of it that came anywhere near touching anyone was the sheet hanging down, everything else was always much much higher than head height even for an adult.