Creating a haunted house is the perfect way to celebrate Halloween, or to scare your guests into being possessed by an evil spirit. Turning your home into a blood-chilling haunted house takes creativity, hard work, and planning. If you want to know how to make the perfect haunted house, follow these steps.
Steps
Method 1 of 3: Come up with a Haunted Plan
Step 1. Plan the haunted route
Before you start preparing your home, you'll need to decide what your guests will see. Will you be busy decorating the outside of the house, or will you focus on the inside? Will you decorate all parts of the house, or just some important rooms and the hallway where guests will pass? Here's what you should consider:
- The haunted house can be as large or small as you like. You can decorate every room in the house or just one, or just focus on the garage. In fact, a series of adjoining rooms can easily make anyone shiver, because they will know that a ghost could be hiding a few meters away.
- When you have planned the path, you can think more about the tone you want to give to the house. Should your home make you laugh or scare the shit out of it?
- Think about who will follow your haunted path. Will your audience be children or adults? This aspect will determine what you will put in the house.
Step 2. Ask your scariest friends for help
It will be nearly impossible to make a haunted house on your own. Your friends will help you not only decorate, but they can also guide and scare your guests inside the house. Here are some things your friends can do:
- They can dress up as ghosts or goblins and grab your guests when they least expect it.
- They can scream or make chilling noises when all is quiet.
- They can "guide" guests between the different haunted rooms, and be in charge of different activities or games.
- If you don't know any friends who want to participate, you can hire actors.
Step 3. Come up with a theme
The more specific your haunted house is, the scarier it will be. Decide whether to build a traditional haunted house, or a serial killer house, or an abandoned asylum or hospital. Your theme will determine how you will decorate your haunted house.
- If you want your haunted house to truly look authentic, come up with a story that explains why the house is haunted. Is it haunted by an old lady whose husband has disappeared into thin air? Or by a family that was brutally murdered in the basement?
- You can tell the story to your guests when they enter the house.
Method 2 of 3: Create an Eerie Mood
Step 1. Create an eerie effect with lighting
Don't put a lot of lights in your haunted house, or people will be too relaxed - they might even see where your scary friends are hiding. If the rooms are dark, guests will be more tense and have more fun. Just make sure your guests see enough to move around the house safely. Here are some ways to use lighting to create a haunted effect:
- Have your guests walk into a very dark room and give them torches to look for an exit.
- Replace the light bulbs with green light bulbs and illuminate them with soft light throughout the house.
- If you decide to use traditional lamps, cover them with cobwebs and glue paper bats into them.
- Prepare a room or hallway where guests need to be blindfolded in order to pass. Make sure the guests don't mind.
- Turn on a spotlight under a cobweb or disgusting fake insects to create a scary shadow.
- Place black plastic bags around the furniture to catch the light in a mysterious way.
Step 2. Use special effects
Try using mirrors, black lights, and smoke to confuse visitors. Special effects will scare your visitors more and more. Here are some special effects you can add to your haunted house:
- Smoke machines are very useful! You can find smoke machines for under $ 50, and they are essential for your haunted house. The smoke obstructs the view of visitors to the haunted house and makes their hearts beat.
- Place strobe lights in a room to create a dramatic slow-motion effect.
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If you use black lights, you can write on the walls with neon paint, and the paint will glow a lot. You can write "HELP!" or "R. I. P.", or draw a thick line of spray paint so that it drips and looks like traces of blood.
Make sure you paint over some cardboard or something you can throw away
- Use spray bottles filled with water to create a haze that guests will have to go through.
Step 3. Make scary noises
The sounds inside the haunted house should scare your guests and keep them alert at all times. The secret to making a scary noise is to play it at the perfect moment and not use it too often, or your guests won't be surprised again. Here are some tricks for making some scary sounds:
- Put some coins in an empty can and tie it to a string. Have one of the volunteers shake the can from time to time.
- Make a recording of different scary sounds in each room. In one room you can put the sound of a chainsaw while in another that of a woman screaming.
- Your volunteers can run across an empty room to create a scary sound.
- Use silence to your advantage. Choose a few moments to silence the house, so that your guests are even more awestruck by the next sound.
Method 3 of 3: Surprise and Scare Your Guests
Step 1. Scare your guests with your volunteers
There are many ways your friends can appear and scare your guests. Here are some things they can do:
- After a moment of silence, a terrifying ghost can jump in front of them and scare them. Try to pop him out of a closet.
- Have a volunteer grab a guest's shoulder. Have him do it slowly, so that the host thinks it's someone who was already with him.
- Take your guests to a dark room. Have one of your volunteers light a torch and he will have to let out a satanic laugh.
- Have one of the volunteers line up behind the guests, and wait for them to slowly realize he is there.
- Have one of your guests dress up as a character from a famous horror movie, such as Freddy or Jason.
- Prepare a door that is difficult to open. Guests will try to open it, and just as they are about to give up, a ghost will open it and jump in front of them.
- Macabre things don't scare people, but surprising things do. The macabre is being abused, and seeing fake blood on the floor of your ghost house will only provoke a yawn from your guests. But if you put a victim who looks really dead next to the blood, your guests will be terrified when he jumps at them!
Step 2. Organize scary activities for your guests
If you want your ghost house to be less scary and more fun for your guests, you can organize different terrifying activities in different rooms. Here are some activities to try:
- Prepare a tub full of cold water with fake snakes inside. Put some coins on the bottom of the tub. Tell your guests that they will not be able to continue until they all have a coin.
- Instead of playing catch apples with your mouth, carve apples to make them look like skulls and play catch them!
- Remove the skin from a bunch of grapes and place it in a bowl. Cover the bowl and tell your guests to put their hands inside and tell you what they feel. Correct answer: eyes!
- Put some cold noodles in another bowl and have your guests take them without them seeing what you are touching. This time, you have created a bowl of worms!
Step 3. Scare your guests by tricking them
Here are some ways to scare your guests even more by tricking them when they least expect it:
- Try the mirror trick. Have your guests open a room where there is nothing but a mirror covered in cobwebs. Give them a few seconds to stare at the mirror and then have a goblin or ghost jump at them.
- Prepare a room with a closed coffin in the center. Organize some activities or surprises to keep guests engaged in the room. Then, just before they leave the room, blast a skeleton out of the coffin!
- Set up mannequins for the haunted house. Get your friends confused among the mannequins, and then have them jump at your guests when they least expect it. This will work especially well at the entrance or exit of the house.
Advice
- If you are trying to reproduce the look of an abandoned house, cover the furniture with white sheeting and attach fake wooden planks to your windows to make it appear closed.
- Create the impression of blood by placing fake blood over mirrors, or by pouring a red candle over mirrors or white candles.
Warnings
- Avoid letting pregnant women, elderly people, very young children, people with heart problems, or people who are claustrophobic or easily frightened into your haunted home. Your haunted house should be fun and shouldn't make anyone panic or feel bad.
- Avoid real candles in your haunted house. If your guests are surprised enough to run and accidentally hit a candle, they could set the house on fire.
