Haunted houses are a staple of Halloween.
Make Your Own Haunted House. If you've grown too old to go trick-or-treating, you can still participate in the holiday by providing some fun for your neighborhood children. Nothing says Halloween like a haunted house. If you want to make your own, you can go as simple or as complex as your time and budget allows.
Instructions
Create the Haunted Experience
1. Plan your path through the haunted house before you start setting up your props. If you are allowing neighborhood children to enter your house, you may want to limit the attraction to your garage or other outer buildings. If you are planning a party, you can take over your entire home. Make sure that visitors can walk through the house safely without getting lost.
2. Play some spooky sound CDs, such as "Fright Night Delight: Music and Sound for a Haunted House" by Roy Shakked, which can be found on Amazon (see Resources below). You can also record your own heavy breathing and screams. Sound is a key element to haunted houses, so make sure you put the disc on repeat. If you don't have the space to build a freestanding haunted house, play the music and sounds from a front window of your home.
3. Make your own props to save money. Spray paint Styrofoam to create tombstones, recycle large boxes to make coffins, crypts or other props and stuff clothing to make dead bodies and body parts.
4. Cover walls with black trash bags, which reflect light slightly, or black paper. You can also cover plain walls by hanging old photos or velvet curtains. Use a combination of techniques to create a dark, eerie atmosphere.
5. Rent or buy an inexpensive fog machine and place behind a false wall, so that the fog rolls around it. While dry ice can be used to create smoke, it is quite dangerous to touch, which can mean burned guests. Renting a fog machine lets you create more smoke for about the same price as buying several blocks of dry ice.
Light the Haunted House
6. Dim the lights, but make sure there is enough light for people to walk through safely.
7. Replace regular light bulbs with colored bulbs and black lights. Red and purple bulbs work well in haunted houses, depending on the contents of the room.
8. Use lampshades and light blockers (like cardboard or colored gels) to create shadows. Colored light seeping from beneath doors creates a small amount of light with plenty of shadows.
9. Set up a strobe light in one of the rooms or areas. You don't want to place too many strobe lights or people will get disoriented and may crash into each other or your props.
10. Have you helpers hold flashlights under their chins for a spooky look. Just make sure you have plenty of extra batteries available.
11. Place yard torches along the pathway to your haunted house. Do not burn these unsupervised, as you don't want kids to burn themselves.
12. Place spotlights behind artificial spider webs to create an eerie look for a corner. Make sure the lights are far enough away from the cotton web so that it doesn't catch on fire.
Tags: make sure, your props, haunted house, haunted houses, home Make
