Battery Powered String Lights, Halloween Pumpkin, Eyeball or Ghost Bulbs

A string of small Halloween bulbs that runs on batteries, so it goes where you want it rather than where the socket is. Pumpkins, eyeballs or ghosts, in a warm white glow, on a fine clear wire that all but disappears once the room is dark.

No plug. No cable running to the wall. No extension lead taped across the hall on the one night the house is full of children.

The socket is the reason the decorations end up in the wrong place

The three places you actually want lit are the mantel, the stair banister and the front porch rail, and there is rarely an outlet near any of them. So the lights go on the sideboard instead, next to the lamp, because that is where the cable reaches. It is a small compromise and you make it every October.

This one carries its own power, so the only thing deciding where it goes is where it looks good. Along a mantel behind the candles. Wound down a banister. Through the middle of the table the sweets are on.

Warm white, which is the whole difference between spooky and a fairground

The cheap Halloween string is nearly always a color-changing one. It cycles through red, green and blue, it flashes, and it turns a hallway into a school disco. You notice the wire, because a hard colored point of light draws the eye straight to the bulb that made it.

Every bulb here is a single warm white LED sitting inside its shell, so the shell is what glows. The pumpkin goes a soft amber gold, and the ghost and the eyeball go the color of a lit candle. The light stays still, which is what makes the shadows behind it worth having.

The shell is the bulb, not a decoration hung beside one

Each character is a molded translucent plastic shell with the LED inside it, so the light comes out of the whole figure rather than out of a bulb with an ornament clipped on. The pumpkin is a squat lobed shell with a scalloped edge and a chevron-eyed grin set into the surface. The eyeball is an ivory sphere with a blue-violet iris and fine red veins, and the ghost stands with its arms out under a wavy hem.

The bulbs sit the same distance apart on all three lengths, so a long string is more of the same rather than the same lights spread thin.

Which one to pick

Pumpkin reads as Halloween from across the road, so it is the one to choose if the string is going somewhere a neighbor will see it. Ghost is the softer of the three and suits a child's room, or a banister where you want the season without the teeth. Eyeball makes people look twice and works best close up, where the iris is readable.

The 1.5 m string and its 10 bulbs suit a mantel, a single window or the middle of a table, and the 3 m with 20 bulbs takes a doorway or a run of banister. The 6 m with 40 bulbs is a porch rail, a fence or a whole room in one go.

Put it up in October, take it down in November, and put the batteries somewhere you will find them again next year.

Specifications

Design: Pumpkin, eyeball or ghost. One design per string

Length 1.5 m (4.9 ft): 10 bulbs

Length 3 m (9.8 ft): 20 bulbs

Length 6 m (19.7 ft): 40 bulbs

Light: Warm white LED, one inside each shell

Light effects: None. The bulbs stay on and do not flash, change color or dim

Power: AA batteries, not included

Material: ABS shells, copper wire, LED bulbs

Wire: Fine clear twin strand, visible only in daylight

Controls: No remote, no timer and no music

Certification: CE, RoHS

Rooms: Mantel, banister, doorway, window, party table, porch, fence

Package Includes

1x Halloween String Light