Halloween Door Decoration, Moving Skeleton Hand with Mist and Red Light

A black gothic plaque a foot tall, with a tear ripped through the middle of it and a skeleton hand reaching out of the hole. Mist rolls down over the fingers and a red light burns somewhere behind the break in the panel. It hangs from a cord loop, and it runs on batteries.

No cable. No plug. No smoke machine in the hallway.

Everything else that goes on a door just hangs there

Think about what usually goes up at the end of October. A printed card with a cat on it, a rubber hand taped to the door, a string of lights that has to reach a socket, and a bag of cobwebs. All of it sits perfectly still. Somebody walks up, looks at the door, works out what they are looking at, and that is the whole event.

This one has a motor inside it. Touch the plaque and the hand moves, the light comes up red behind the tear, and mist starts rolling out over the bones. The hand is a separate casting hung off the forearm on a small metal pin, which is the part doing the work, and you can see the joint in the photographs.

The mist comes from a chamber you fill with water

There is a small water chamber inside the shell and a thirty milliliter bottle in the box to fill it from. Twenty milliliters is the limit, and going past it makes the chamber leak, so the bottle covers one fill and a top up. Three AAA batteries do everything else, and they are not included. Keep the battery compartment dry while you are filling it.

The mist itself is thin and low rather than thick. It drifts out around the arm and falls down across the hand, which is exactly how it looks in the plain studio photograph, and it reads best against a dark door or a dim hallway. Outside on a porch it does the same thing with the night behind it.

It is a molding, not a printed board

Everything on the black face stands proud of it. A scrolled crest runs across the arched top, with gold rubbed into the high points and the hollows left dark. There is a matching one down at the foot, and a silver filigree ornament sits on the raised panel just above the tear. Down each long side is a strip of scrollwork with a small skull set into it, picked out in the same gold.

The tear is the part that does the selling. It is ragged rather than cut, deep red inside, with streaks running down the panel below it, and the two forearm bones come through at an angle so the hand hangs clear of the face. At just over thirteen ounces the whole thing has enough weight to stay put on a door that gets opened all evening.

Put it up in the last week of September, and the first person to reach your door finds out what it does before you have to tell them.

Specifications

Type: Battery powered hanging Halloween decoration

Material: Plastic

Color: Black, with gold and silver picked out in the raised detail

Dimensions: 12 x 4.7 x 5.6 in (30.5 x 12 x 14.3 cm), height by width by depth

Weight: 13.1 oz (370 g)

Power: 3 x AAA batteries, not included

Light: Red, set inside the torn opening

Mist: Water filled, 0.7 oz (20 ml) maximum, and overfilling causes leaks

Activation: Touch

Hanging: Fitted cord loop, no screws or brackets

Intended use: Indoors or outside, on a door, a wall, a shelf or an entryway

Care: Keep the battery compartment away from water

Package Includes

1x Halloween Door Decoration

1x Water Bottle, 1 oz (30 ml)