haunted house

haunted house

 

A spooky haunted or haunted house is ideal for celebrating Halloween and really scaring your guests. With some creativity, work and planning, you can turn your house or room into a spooky haunted house. Follow these simple steps and learn how to turn your cozy home into a terrifying ghost train.

Make a chilling plan

Start planning the space.

Before you start remodeling your home, you should be clear about what you want your guests to see. Do you also want to decorate the outdoor area or do you want to concentrate on the rooms? Do you want to decorate all rooms or just a few, such as the corridor and living room? You should consider the following: The haunted house can be as big or small as you want. You can either decorate every room in your house or just one room, even if it’s just the garage. In fact, focusing on a few rooms can be a lot scarier. Your guests will get the creeps because they suspect that a monster can hide behind every corner. Once you’ve finished planning the room, you can start thinking about the mood you want to convey. Would you rather make your guests laugh or freak out with fear? Consider who the guests of your haunted house are. Are they young children or older adults? It also depends on which props you use.

Ask your ghostly friends for help.

It will be almost impossible to pull a haunted house out of a hat all by yourself. Your friends can not only help you with the decorations, but later they can also scare your guests and chase them through the haunted house. Here are some tips for getting your friends involved: They can dress up as ghosts or goblins and scare your guests when they least expect it. You can scream and make a noise in the haunted house when it’s eerily quiet. You can guide your guests through the different ghost rooms and do different games and activities with them. If you don’t have friends who want to take part, you should consider hiring actors.

Think of a topic.

The more concrete the story of your haunted house, the more spooky it will be. Consider whether you want a traditional haunted house, or maybe a serial killer’s, or even a former hospital or abandoned mental institution. The story largely determines how you will decorate the house. If you want a truly authentic haunted house, make up a story. This explains why the house is cursed and haunted. Is there the ghost of an old lady whose husband has mysteriously disappeared? Or is the house haunted by the souls of a family who were brutally murdered in the basement? You can tell the story when you receive your guests at the entrance.

Create an eerie atmosphere

Use the lighting to create spooky accents.

Don’t use too many lighting sources in your haunted house or the guests will relax too much. They’ll also notice where your ghostly friends are hiding. When it gets dark, a certain tension is noticeable, which creates just the right mood. Just make sure that your guests can move about the rooms reasonably without injuring themselves. Here are some tips for adding light to your haunted house: Consider sending your guests into completely dark rooms armed with flashlights. Swap out your regular light bulbs for green ones and dim them so they only seem dim. If you want to use some traditional lamps, decorate them with cobwebs and glue plastic bats to the inside. Choose a room or corridor that your guests have to cross blindfolded. But make sure that they really feel comfortable with it. Aim a spotlight to illuminate a spider web or creepy plastic insect, creating a spooky shadow. Wrap black plastic bags around the furniture to catch some light and create a spooky atmosphere.

Use special effects.

Use mirrors, black lights and fog to confuse your visitors. These special effects ensure that your guests are even more startled with every movement. Here are some examples of special effects you can use on your haunted house: Fog machines are great for this! You can get this absolute must for every haunted house for around 30 euros. The fog ensures that your guests hardly see anything. So they slowly lose their orientation and the scary effect is even higher. Use a strobe light for a room to create a dramatic, slow-motion effect and add to the madness. If your haunted house also uses black lights, you can use neon spray paint to write spooky messages on the walls. These will glow eerily in the dark. You could spray “HELP” or “R.I.P.” Or you paint with a thick brush and a lot of paint so that it looks like blood is running down. Make sure you only paint on card or cloth that you can easily remove later. You can also fill spray bottles with some water. This also looks like fog that your guests have to walk through.

Make spooky noises.

These will scare your haunted house visitors and keep them on their toes. The trick with spooky noises is, on the one hand, to use them at the right moment and, on the other hand, not too often, otherwise, nobody will be frightened by them. Here are some ideas for making spooky noises: Put some coins in an empty soda can and tie it to a piece of string. Your helpers should shake the can from time to time. Place recordings of spooky sounds in every room. One room can have the sound of a chainsaw while in the other you can hear a woman screaming. Your secret helpers can scurry from corner to corner of an empty room to create a scary sound. Silence is golden. Create a few moments when the house is dead quiet. Your guests will be even more startled by the next noise.

Surprise and scare your guests

Scare the guests together with your helpers.

There are a number of ways your friends can appear to scare your visitors. Here are a few ideas: After a moment of silence, a spooky ghost may pop out and startle your visitors. For example, one of your friends can jump out of a closet disguised as a monster. One of your helpers could grab a guest by the shoulder. If he does this very slowly, the visitor might initially think that it is another guest. Lead your guests into a dark room. Tell one of your helpers to hold a flashlight under their face and laugh eerily. One of your helpers stands behind a group of guests and waits until they realize that he is among them. Ask one of your guests to dress like a famous character from a horror movie. This could be Jason or Freddy, for example. Close a door in such a way that it is difficult for the guests to open it. The first will try over and over again to push the doorknob. When he’s about to give up, a genie will open the door and jump out. Bloody things are usually less frightening than surprises. Blood and carnage seems overdone most of the time. The sight of fake blood on the floor of your haunted house will only bring a weary smile from most guests. However, you could ask someone to play “dead” and place a large pool of blood around them. When the supposed “victim” suddenly jumps up, your guests will scream in fear.

Make up spooky activities for your guests.

If you design your haunted house to be less of a scare and more of fun entertainment for your guests, you can give them a variety of spooky tasks. Here are some ideas: Set out a tub of cold water and place some plastic or rubber snakes in it. Throw in some coins and tell your guests that they can’t move on until they take out a coin. Modify the traditional game in which players must grab apples without using their hands. Carve the apples into skulls and play Grab the Skull. Take a handful of grapes, peel off the skins and place them in a bowl. Cover them with a cloth and encourage your guests to reach inside. You should guess what’s inside. And the correct answer is: eyeballs. Place cold spaghetti in a bowl and ask your guests to reach in without looking. This time they have a bowl of worms in front of them!

Scare your guests by fooling them.

Here are some ideas to scare your guests even more with deception when they least expect it: Try the mirror trick. Have your guests open a door that reveals nothing but a mirror covered in cobwebs. Give them a few seconds to stare in the mirror. Then make a ghost or goblin jump at them. Arrange a room in the center of which is a closed coffin. Think of a few activities or surprises to keep your guests busy. Just before they leave the room, a “skeleton” jumps out of the coffin. Scatter some dummies all over the haunted house. Tell your helpers to stand next to or behind the dummies. When guests least expect it, a dummy suddenly comes to life and pounces on them. This trick is particularly good for the house entrance or exit.

Tips

For an even gory effect, sprinkle some fake blood or red dripping candles over mirrors and white candles. If you go for the abandoned haunted house variant, drape white cloth around your furniture and attach cardboard to your windows so they appear as if they are boarded up. Before you buy your props and decorations from a specialty store, check out your local grocery store. Often there are also high-quality props at a much lower price. Start preparing a few weeks before Halloween so you have plenty of time to take care of everything.

Warnings

Do not invite pregnant women, the elderly, very young children, people with heart disease, or people with claustrophobia into your haunted house. After all, you want your house to be fun for guests, not cause someone to have a panic attack or get seriously injured. Don’t use actual wax candles in your haunted house. Remember that your guests will often be surprised and startled. In moments like this, you can quickly knock over a candle and set the whole haunted house on fire.

 

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