I will probably use a 400 watt metal halide light  that will be hooked up to a motion sensor that shines in my room if somebody messes with the Halloween lights

I will probably use a 400 watt metal halide light  that will be hooked up to a motion sensor that shines in my room if somebody messes with the Halloween lights

Have an underdriven XBO lamp outside your door and when the vandals try to smash it, they get a faceful of hot quartz.
About 6 years ago, I grew my own pumpkin and carved it. We came back home later to find someone had smashed it. Boy, was I p!ssed.

HID on motion sensor ? By the time it warms up to any usefull output, vandals would be out of sight

Sometimes ghosts show themselfes even under bright light though. If your concepts of ghostly atmosphere accept this, you can make some bright spot lit by the MH all the time and depend on light spill from it to provide light elsewhere. But this won't work well if you want darkness

Consider using a cycling lamp for more haunted effect....



Fluorescents would be better suited for on-demand. Use high power ballasts so that they start at reasonable brightness right away

In a few props i made i actually used Fluorescents FOR the Halloween prop, to simulate thunder storm with sound :

Make a timing circuit that put out mains voltage for a few seconds, once in about 1/2 - 1 minute. Sorta mains voltage 555 timer. I hacked that with a staircase lighting time switch, but feel free to use any other design you wish - actual 555 timer + relay will work great

On the output of that, connect in parallel :

1
Switch Start (Preheat) Fluorescents. They get power exactly for a couple seconds so only get to make flashes before they are back off

If you want this more elaborate, add another stage of the timing circuit that powers Instant Start lights. The timing pulse then is 2 stage : Longer interval of flashing Switch Start lights, and ~1 sec of Instant Start lights that provide consistent bright flash for the main lightning bolt

2
Relay that will provide open contact output. The relay can be powered in parallel to the lights through a step down transformer, or if you use low voltage timing circuit, then dorectly from it. this relay controls the sound

For the sound, burn a CD that contains tracks like :

---\/\/\\/\/\/\\/----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 sec silence - thunder effect - long silence (longer than the OFF interval of the timing circuit)

In the "Thunder" section use different sample of thunder for each track, so that it won't be too monotonous
In the "Silence" you can include other sounds like storm, haunted house sounds etc, but keep good volume contrast between them and the thunder

Get an old PC CD-ROM drive, that have a "play / skip forward" button. Place the CD, connect the sound output to your sound system, and connect the relay contact to short the "skip forward" button

Every time the timer fires, ligths makes flashes, and with delay of a second there is rumbling thunder sound

High intensity tower xenon strobe lights on a motion sensor like the one I have shown here

http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-107173

At 270,000 candela in day mode, it's enough to burn the retinas of any perp.