Every October the best house on the block isn't the one with the most foam tombstones — it's the one with a window that moves. Projection mapping is how you get there, and it's far easier than the carved-pumpkin crowd thinks.

Why projection beats static props

A plastic skeleton looks the same all night. A projected haunted window breathes: ghostly figures drift across the glass, faces appear and dissolve, candle-light flickers. Because the visuals are animated, the scene never goes stale, and trick-or-treaters stop to watch instead of walking by.

It's also reusable and clean. There's nothing to store in the garage afterward, nothing to repaint, and no fake cobwebs to peel off the bushes in November. Next year you open the same scene, tweak the corners, and you're done. And because SquirrelCast runs in your browser, there's nothing to install on the laptop you already own.

The gear you need

Less than you'd guess. The whole trick comes down to three things:

A laptop running Chrome or Edge on the desktop.
Any projector, plugged into the laptop as a second display over HDMI. A budget projector is fine for a dark window scene.
A projection surface for the glass. Tape a sheet of tracing paper or a piece of frosted shower-curtain film to the inside of the window so you can rear-project onto it. The frosting catches the light and hides the projector from people outside.

That's the magic of a window: you project from indoors, the glass becomes a screen, and onlookers outside see only the haunted scene — no equipment, no glare.

Map a haunted window

Tape tracing paper inside your window. Cover the glass with tracing paper or frosted shower-curtain film so it can act as a rear-projection screen.
Set the projector inside, aimed at the glass. Position it far enough back to fill the whole window.
Open SquirrelCast and load the Haunted Window template. Start from the ready-made Haunted Window scene — no design work required.
Open the projector window and drop it on the projector. Hit Project to open the second window, then drag it onto your projector display.
Drag the 4 corners to match the window frame. Pull each corner until the scene lines up perfectly with the glass.
Go fullscreen and turn off the lights. Kill the room lights and let the haunt take over.

Scenes save locally in your browser, so once it's dialed in you can close the laptop and reopen the exact same setup tomorrow night.

Halloween ideas to try

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Haunted Window

Rear-project ghosts, faces, and flickering candlelight onto frosted glass — the classic, crowd-stopping effect.

Get the template →

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Garage-door Portal

Turn the garage door into a swirling, otherworldly portal that glows from across the street.

Get the template →

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Spooky wall projections

Crawling shadows, dripping textures, and pulsing color across a porch wall or fence — add your own image or video too.

Build a scene →

This works just as well for indoor parties — drop a portal behind the snack table or a haunted scene on a hallway wall. One thing to keep in mind: a brighter projector (2,500+ lumens) holds up better in rooms with ambient light, while a dark window or a dim corner looks great on a budget projector.

Still deciding on a projector or surface? The FAQ covers lumens, resolution, and what surfaces map best.

Turn your window into a haunted scene.