Thinking of keeping the neighborhood tricksters busy this year with something besides toilet papering your favorite trees? Hold your own spooktacular haunt this Halloween season! These simple to implement ideas will transform your home or backyard into a seething pit of fear . . .
Before you hold your haunt, you need to decide which areas of your home you want to transform. It’s imperative that you block off any additional doorways or areas of your home you don’t want your guests to access. Cover windows and doorways with black trashbags (or black shower liners- dollar store!) If the area is quite dark, consider adding some “caution” tape (which is available at lowes or Home Depot). If creating a backyard haunt, be sure to block off areas that may cause injury (potholes in the lawn, tree roots that jut out, etc). It’s no fun if your guests twist their ankles or break a leg! |
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Add various “exhibits” throughout your haunted house, including Witch Bottles, gothic candle holders, glaring demon eyes ,creeping gleaming eyesin your landscaping, etc. |
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Don’t forget to decorate the area leading up to the Entrance of your Haunted home . . . create a cemetary (tombstone sayings here) as well as the scent of a Cemetary. |
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You can add various special effects within your haunted house including crunching bones, floating ghosts, frighful fog effects, shrunken heads |
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Fill Clear vases with Dark red water (food coloring!) and a single black rose (available at dollar stores). You can add body parts to the vases as well. |
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Wet yarn hung from the ceiling creates a vastly creepy experience for guests- when the yarn brushes the sides of their face, you’ll get screams of fear! Be sure to add plenty of spiders, rats, bats and other creepy crawlies sure to induce unnatural levels of fear. Add a fake mouse in a mousetrap (place in a well lit area of the haunted house). These look very authentic and will make your guests cringe. |
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Create Zombies & Ghouls with their Guts hanging outas props, or dress friends and family members in scary costumes or as maimed characters. |
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Add an antiqued look to your furniture and mirrors by draping cheesecloth (spattered with blood of course!) over them. |
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Be sure that any candles or dry ice is protected from being touched or knocked over! |
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Don’t forget to complete your frightening haunts with Sound Effects, use cds of various scary sounds (some triggered to go off by motion), as well as bat sound effects(this one works very well in rooms with wet yarn hanging from the ceiling!) |
create an autopsy table– complete with gelled spaghetti brains if you want to fake a lobotomy
head on a platter- you’ll need an appliance box (a washer or dryer box works great!) cut a hole in the top, place a chair in the box for your actor to sit in, pop his or her head through the top, add a pretty tablecloth and a platter cover.
i’ve known people to do this one by pushing tables together- which is really really dangerous and should be avoided. if you get a “jumpy” guest in your halloween display, they could bump the table and cause serious injury!
these are amazing ideas to create a scary haunted house. shape and direct the attention of those who would approach your haunted house of a home this halloween. if a potential victim doesn’t know where to look, they’re bound to miss something you worked hard to create.
as such, limit where your haunting occur, such as within a garage or a single outdoor structure, so people don’t get lost. plus, don’t set up a haunted house inside your home, as people will wet themselves. nobody wants to sop that up.