# Cemetery lighting opinions?



## The Haddonfield Slasher (4 mo ago)

Hey all. I'm looking for opinions. I've historically lit my entire cemetery up with blue lights from the front. I drive some 5 ft posts into the ground just inside my fencing, and it has worked nicely. Still does, but I always think back to some cemetery lighting "instructions" or advice I saw on the other forum. It stated that you should have lights mounted very low, even ground level outside of the fencing, and cast long shadows from stones in the front of the yard on to rear stones and the background, in my case the house. The long shadows will add to the scene. Here are the illustrations they used which are not mine...

















I'm debating lowering my lights in the yard to maybe a foot from the ground for a little more of the effect in the second illustration. 

Any thoughts? Is it better to see the actual stones better, or cast shadows?


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## exascale (Jan 3, 2018)

Yes, the skull and bone method works great. I did it a few years back in a cemetery scene. See here:








2020 Socially distanced cemetery


Here are a few pictures from my socially distanced 2020 cemetery display. The main attraction was the Atmosfear Skeleton band projected onto the garage door and playing their tune. The lighting of the cemetery was done following the skull and bone method. Two lights cross-light the grave yard...




www.hauntforum.com




The effect was great and the pictures really don't capture full effect of the lighting.

Use two stage lights (or 500 watt equivalent flood lights) with dark blue gel if you can. In the original skull and bone method instructions it suggested using two 150 watt flood lights. I found that the suggestion was laughable... Even 150 watt LED equivalent floods simply did not put out enough light. I did use some yellow LED flood lights to light up the pine trees on either side of my house (barely visible in my first picture). The was to substitute for not having a tree to light in the middle of the back yard but still provide some 'height' as per the skull and bone method. A couple LED lanterns in the graveyard provided some pops of yellow to complete the effect. The bottom line is that fewer lights is better to pull off a dramatic looking scene per the skull and bone method.


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## Riff_JunkieSFR (Jul 11, 2011)

I tried a similar lighting setup last year and I was pretty happy with it. I had placed all of the lighting inside my fence though, but it was all ground level. My front yard has two tiers so the first layer of lighting was against the fence pointing inward, the second was on the other side of the semi-circular driveway that cuts the front yard in half and the third was right on the retaining wall on the small upper portion of the yard pointed at the house. I ended up using LED landscape lighting that I found through Monster Tutorials on YouTube which have sixteen different colors and you can adjust the brightness of them. The only downside that I experienced which could have just been the way I had it setup was that the lighting was great walking up to the house but when you got to the house and turned around all of the lighting was directed at you so with the rest of the street dark it could be kind of blinding.


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

I think lighting is going to be highly subjective and subject to a lot of personal choice. Me personally, I tend to use pretty minimal lighting - letting the flickering flames, twinkling candles and sparking / strobing lights fill in most of the area. I probably use 10's of watts of light vs hundreds or thousands... sort of a throwback to the old days of "what you can't see is almost as spooky as what you can see." And, for me personally, I pretty much abhor blue. But I think that is just growing up through the "LED years" - blue was the last one to the table and seems to be the 'common/boring' one we're stuck with. Every manufacturer seems to think that every indicator needs to be some eye-piercingly bright blue light.

From the illustrations you show, I'd probably choose "B" and kill off the spot lights in front, and use a bunch of orange/red/(possibly) green and violet (dim) flickering lights in front of each tombstone create the same effect, but causing the shadows to 'dance' and seemingly 'come to life' on the house. Remember, 'black' is a color, too! lol.

But again, just one person's opinion. I know anytime my neighbors go outside, they turn on about 5,000 watts of HID lighting so day or night, it always looks like high noon over there! Me, I'm most happy sitting out under the stars with a flickering candle or two and a nice fire in the fireplace!


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## The Haddonfield Slasher (4 mo ago)

Thanks Riff, exascale, and Corey for your feedback. You're definitely enforcing the feeling I've had for the last couple of years that I need to let my lighting do more of the work on setting the tone. 


corey872 said:


> I think lighting is going to be highly subjective and subject to a lot of personal choice. Me personally, I tend to use pretty minimal lighting - letting the flickering flames, twinkling candles and sparking / strobing lights fill in most of the area. I probably use 10's of watts of light vs hundreds or thousands... sort of a throwback to the old days of "what you can't see is almost as spooky as what you can see." And, for me personally, I pretty much abhor blue. But I think that is just growing up through the "LED years" - blue was the last one to the table and seems to be the 'common/boring' one we're stuck with. Every manufacturer seems to think that every indicator needs to be some eye-piercingly bright blue light.
> 
> From the illustrations you show, I'd probably choose "B" and kill off the spot lights in front, and use a bunch of orange/red/(possibly) green and violet (dim) flickering lights in front of each tombstone create the same effect, but causing the shadows to 'dance' and seemingly 'come to life' on the house. Remember, 'black' is a color, too! lol.
> 
> But again, just one person's opinion. I know anytime my neighbors go outside, they turn on about 5,000 watts of HID lighting so day or night, it always looks like high noon over there! Me, I'm most happy sitting out under the stars with a flickering candle or two and a nice fire in the fireplace!


Subjective is right. I definitely agree that less can be more when it comes to lighting, but I have a huge X-factor... a [email protected] yellow street light right across from my driveway that never gives that black starting point. If I light the house up less, the street light casts it's own yellow light on the house which is just worse in every way. Adding more powerful lighting cancels out the street light. You can see the light cast from my X-factor in the photo below in areas that are not lit such as the front of the pillars, the sidewalk, and the driveway. Although, I intentionally place my pillars where they are, and planted that tree between the street light and the front yard so that it casts shadows from the tree branches on to the pillars...








That said, I do light up individual stones with spotlights. Those stones are ones that are either animatronic stones and move, or have animatronic zombies place in front. I bought a low voltage transformer, and several low voltage flame lights that I plan to install just for Halloween one of these years, but I've yet to take that on. I plan to place low voltage flicker flame lighting in front of 4 or 5 stones to add to the ambiance.

I'm really leaning towards lowing my front cemetery lights down given the feedback you guys are giving me.


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Moving then down would definitely cast some eerie shadows back up on the walls. For a nice, sharp shadow, the bulb should ideally be a point source of light. A single LED would be a good approximation, but any sort of spot light with, say, 10 individual LEDs, may give 10 individual shadows. Or if the bulb is frosted or has a diffuser, that will give diffuse shadows, too.

Though I see what you mean about the streetlight and that would really cut down on the darkness of shadows. Probably not much you can do with that - short of a pellet gun.... and those aren't even terribly effective on the new LED street lights - not that I'd know - lol! But good job on working the tree into the landscape and using it to cast eerie shadows!


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## The Haddonfield Slasher (4 mo ago)

corey872 said:


> Moving then down would definitely cast some eerie shadows back up on the walls. For a nice, sharp shadow, the bulb should ideally be a point source of light. A single LED would be a good approximation, but any sort of spot light with, say, 10 individual LEDs, may give 10 individual shadows. Or if the bulb is frosted or has a diffuser, that will give diffuse shadows, too.
> 
> Though I see what you mean about the streetlight and that would really cut down on the darkness of shadows. Probably not much you can do with that - short of a pellet gun.... and those aren't even terribly effective on the new LED street lights - not that I'd know - lol! But good job on working the tree into the landscape and using it to cast eerie shadows!


Yep, good points. I do use two very bright RGB LED floods, one in the corner of the graveyard, and another most of the way across, behind one of the pillars. I'm just finishing up putting things out today, so haven't done the lights or cords yet. I think I might play with the lighting tonight before mounting the fixtures. I'll try them lower on the post to start and if the shadows cast are replaced with yellow light from the streetlight, I'll just raise the fixtures back to about 4 ft to drown out the streetlight. I guess trial and error is my best option. It helped to think it out a bit with you guys.

Hmmm, pellet gun vs streetlight. I think I'd pay to find out which would win. It'd be an interesting conversation when Streets and Sanitation stops by to ask me to look at my security footage when they can't figure out how the light across the street from the Halloween house gets shot out the first week of each October. 🤣


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## bikerglen (Feb 1, 2017)

My cemetery is rather small so I tend to lots of small lights. Everything is lit from the ground. Red, yellow, green, and blue lights to highlight some of the props out front. Then there's two small white flickering floodlights behind the front row of tombstones to highlight the back row of tombstones. It'd probably be scarier if I turned off the pixels outlining the tombstones.








With snow:








Different angle:


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## VIGILANTE (Sep 19, 2010)

I used to use the skull and bone method, but inside my fence. I used PAR Studio Lighting cans mounted on boards staked to the ground. One can used a magenta color gel, while the other used a cyan color gel; because using only one color will wash out the depth and color of your scene. I always found it to be too bright, so I added some in-line dimmers. Years ago, I came up with a system using RGB Light Strips on the back of the lower rail across the front sections of my fence, so I quit using the PAR cans. Because my yard has a grade away from the house, the back of the cemetery was too dark; so I use a couple of RGB floods, on the ground, in the middle of the cemetery pointing at angles towards the back. I also use various colored spotlights to highlight specific props and tombstones. I've included some pics of my new lighting set-up for an example.


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## VIGILANTE (Sep 19, 2010)

This is a link to my facebook page showing more pics and video: Reapers Boneyard


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## The Haddonfield Slasher (4 mo ago)

Great suggestions, and love the pics!

So after some feedback in this thread, I decided this year to try a very slightly modified version of the skull and bone method. My modification is that I have one light 6" above the ground, and the second is about 18" above ground, both inside the fencing. I also moved the lights from one in the middle behind a pillar and the other in a corner, to both in the corners. In my opinion the difference is pretty huge and looks much better when you look at the two different methods in the same context. In 2022, the light is no longer saturating the grass and house. Btw, I've not dimmed the lights at all for 2022. In fact, I've used brighter lights to light up the house green and purple.

*2020 - Raised lighting*








*2022 - Cross and bone*


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

Very nice. Just goes to show how tweaking a setup can make a big difference.

In our yard display, only one light is raised, thanks to having a conveniently located tree we can hang a light from. The rest are at ground level, which has made for some fun shadows on tombstones when there was a prop between the stones and the light source. This year we may try another raised light because one side of the yard has always been a bit too dark even with ground lights.


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