It seams like black lights and halloween decorations should just go hand in hand. The black light is the perfect option to make a seemingly “realistic” ghost effect. Making cloth ghosts black light reactive is very simple to do and it only takes a short amount of time. What I have found that works best for cheese cloth ghosts is using RIT Whitener brightener which can be found at most craft stores.
RIT Whitener & Brightener has phosphates that react with the black light also making your laundy whites appear brighter in normal light. To use it all you have to do is mix about a tablespoon of RIT with about 4 cups of water into a spray bottle. The amount doesn’t have to be very accurate I’m just expressing you don’t have to use very much of the RIT dye. I would recommend spray this outside as it will most likely get every where. Just spray and leave it on, no washing required. I touched up an old crank ghost I’ve had for a few years. You can see on the right I just sprayed the RIT dye and on the left I hadn’t spayed. What a difference.
Thank you so much for this very helpful post! We dunked our fabric ghosts in a bucket of hot water and a couple packs of the powder version of RIT whitener and they are glowing like crazy. We went overboard with the product and like our result, but believe the author is correct when s/he says a small amount will do the trick.