How to Make Your Own Haunted House

• by Sara K.

Introduction

• Making a haunted house is possible in any location. If you want to take a break from Trick or Treating, why not create one in your own home? You can set up each room of your house with its own thrills and chills. Or set up outside and hang ghosts from trees. Just limiting yourself to the basement or garage? Use lighting and music to create a terrifying atmosphere. Whatever you do, have fun and make your haunted house your own!

Before the Party

• Your haunted house will progress much more smoothly if you make a few key decisions before setting up.

Location

• Map out your location before you do anything else. Think about:

1. Will the haunted house start outside?
2. How many rooms will you use?
3. How many people can fit in the rooms?
4. How will people enter and exit?

• Maybe you want to turn your entire house into a haunted haven. Or maybe you just want to haunt the basement, garage or backyard. Think about the space you're going to work with as you make plans.

Budget

• Consider your budget as you plan your haunted house.

1. If you're on a tighter budget, plan to make more of your own props. The results can be just as scary as using elaborate mechanized props.
   • For those with less money to spend, consider turning just a few rooms into chambers of horror. You can concentrate your scare power into less space.
2. If you have money to burn, take advantage! Fog machines, a mechanized Dracula, coffins that move: use equipment that will give your house an edge.

Attendees

• Who's coming to your haunted house? Make it appropriate for your audience.

1. If your haunted house will be patronized by toddlers, stick to friendly scares.
2. If you are inviting a more hardened adult/teenage set, the gorier the better.
3. If your haunted house's attendees will be mixed in age range, create a separate section with scarier parts for older kids.

To Theme or Not to Theme?

• Of course your haunted house will have frights and scares, but you may want to add a theme as well. Possible themes include:

1. Scary creatures: werewolves, witches, and vampires
2. Scary movies: Jason, Freddy, and Michael, or maybe the Corpse Bride.
3. Ghosts and poltergeists: whether it's Casper or something scarier, ghosts always lend a haunting atmosphere.
4. Favorite toys: if the attendees like Transformers, have a robot section. If Barbie is more their style, a chamber of haunted Barbies may be just the thing.

Invitations

• Once you've settled on a set up and location, don't forget to tell people about your scary location.

1. Send out a ghoulishly themed invitation: red ink to mimic blood spatters on your cards.
2. If you want to construct something more elaborate, fake fingers nestled in a box are quite scary!

Decorating Your Home

• Set the perfect haunted mood by decorating your home in the true Halloween spirit!

1. String lights with Halloween colors outside.
2. Cover your furniture with white sheets, for an abandoned appearance.
3. Drape mirrors with cheesecloth.
4. Paint witches or hanging figures on your windowshades. Backlit, and seen from the outside, they are a sign of more scares to come!
5. If there are areas of the house that will be off-limits, mark them as such with police tape.
   • For extra scares, have a CD player emitting screams, sighs, and moans from the cloistered area.

Haunted House Food and Treats

• Keep the haunted house theme alive in your food as well.

1. Get a brain mold from a Halloween store to create Jello brains for your visitors.
2. Decorate cupcakes with licorice spiders.
3. Freeze food-colored water in a rubber glove. Peel off the glove and drop the ghastly hand into a bowl of punch.

• • Check out Mahalo's Guide to Halloween Recipes for more haunting food ideas.

Create Your Haunted House

• Now we're onto the best part - creating your haunted house! The best haunted house is one that scares guests, keeping them on their toes, without sending them out into the night screaming in terror.

Soundtrack

• A soundtrack sets the mood for the entire haunted house. Remember that less is more: eerie music will instill more chills than constant screams!

1. Choose something that can play continuously throughout the entire haunted section.
2. You can buy a soundtrack from any Halloween or party supply store.
3. If you have the skills, make your own soundtrack with creepy music and bloodcurdling screams.

Entering

1. If you're turning your entire home into a haunted location, have participants enter your house via a different entrance than usual. This will alter their expectations as they walk inside.
2. Wherever the your haunted house begins, drape the entryway with dark cloth to alter its appearance.
   • Hang spiders and cobwebs from this to make it even spookier.
3. You can also hang black thread in your doorway. The strands brushing against people as they enter will make them think they're walking through cobwebs.

Lighting

• Have enough light so people can see and walk safely, but keep it spooky!

1. Cover your windows with black sheets or plastic bags to keep out all outside light.
2. Use strobe lights or black bulbs for an eerier glow.
3. Change your lights to colored bulbs; use orange or purple for Halloween flavor.

Walls

• You'll want to decorate your walls, of course. If you're working in just a few rooms, you may want to set up dividers to make new walls. Twisty, narrow passageways are spookier than a big open space!

1. Tape dark sheets to the walls, to alter their normal appearance.
   • Decorate the sheets with ghosts or tombstones painted with glow-in-the-dark paint.
2. If possible, have people stand behind curtains or sheets lining the walls. They can make noises to startle people as they walk by.
3. To create new passageways and walls, buy PVC framework from a supply store like Home Depot or Lowe's. Drape it with plastic sheeting or cloth and you've got new walls!
4. Or hang ropes from wall to wall and drape them with sheets.

Props and Effects

• Skeletons, ghosts, bats, rats, spiders: use props to create the right atmosphere.

1. Set up a graveyard that visitors must stroll past to enter the haunted house.
2. Make fake tombstones with insulation board.
   • You can buy insulation board at home supply stores like Home Depot and Lowe's. Use a hot knife to cut them into the right shapes, and then paint them gray.
   • If you like, paint guests' names on the graves, for extra ghoulish effect.
3. If the graves are outside, pile mounds of earth around them so they look freshly dug.
   • You can do this inside too, if you don't mind the mess!
4. Create ghoulish arms reaching out of their graves by having a fake hand reaching out of an old sleeve.
   • You can also make fake hands by filling surgical gloves with sand.
5. Use styrofoam heads from beauty supply stores to create disembodied murder victims.
   • Extra points for blood and knives!
6. Make coffins, either out of plywood or cardboard.
   

   (Creative Commons photo by Robert La Londe-Berg)
   • Use a large cardboard box cut into pieces to make a coffin.
   • Decorate with skeletons, fake cobwebs, spiders, bats and rats.
   • If you have the mechanical skills, put fake rats or spiders on motorized tracks, so they move!
7. Make bats out of black construction paper and hang them from the ceiling.
8. Ghosts can be made by with a styrofoam ball, fishing line, and old white sheets.
   • Poke a hole through the styrofoam ball with a drill or coat hanger.
   • Thread fishing line through the hole with a needle.
   • Pass the needle and fishing line through center of the white sheet.
   • Tie the fishing line into a loop.
   • Using the tied-off loop, hang your ghost in a corner or alcove.
   • Arrange the sheet so it's centered over the ball.
   • Add spooky eyes with glow in the dark paint.
9. For a haunted house event that will please the younger set, turn cardboard boxes into a small maze.
   • You, or your kids, can decorate the boxes with glow-in-the-dark paints beforehand.
10. Take fishbowls or other clear bowls and fill them with gory delights.
    • In the dark, cold spaghetti can be a poor soul's intestines.
    • A bowl of peeled grapes are a witch's supply of newt eyes.
    • Pumpkin flesh can be a rotting zombie brain.
11. Put plastic brains or other organs in clear jars, then add colored water. You've now got a mad scientist's specimen.
12. Make a smoking cauldron with dry ice inside a black pot. Just add water and let the smoke pour out.
    • Use caution when you handle dry ice, and never touch it with bare hands!
13. If you like, use a fog machine for a spooky atmosphere.
    • If using a fog machine, chill the fog with ice before unleashing it, so the fog doesn't float away too quickly.

• Enjoy these props and effects, but remember that less is more. Don't feel that you have to decorate every corner of your house. Fewer props, hidden in unexpected locations, make for more scares!

Haunted House Participants

• If the haunted house is for children, you must have adults monitor everyone's progress. Even if everyone attending is over 18, however, it's good to have a few friends or relatives who know the haunted house's secrets. They can help anyone who gets scared walking through. Remember, your guests' safety is much more important than any haunted house. And these players can still get in on the scares and fun.

1. For example, have someone dress as a vampire and hide out until claiming a "victim!"
   • Remember, red food coloring + corn syrup = fake blood.
2. Or have someone carry a chainless chainsaw and brandish it as they leap out at people. Guaranteed to scare!
3. Your helpers don't need to act like bloodthirsty killers, though. Simply having someone sit in the dark and move slightly will creep out visitors.

Conclusion

• Congratulations on your terrifyingly fun haunted house. Enjoy it and have a happy Halloween!

Resources for How to Make Your Own Haunted House

• Be Jane: Create a Spook-tacular Haunted House
• Florida Today: You can haunt your house (October 20, 2007)
• Martha Stewart: The Haunted House Party
• DoItYourself.com: Haunted Houses
• About.com: Make Your Own Haunted House
• About.com: Make a Creepy Coffin
• eHow: How to Make a Haunted House
• Buffalo News: "Start early in planning haunted house" (October 12, 2007)
• DoItYourself.com: Tips for Creating a Super Spooky Haunted House
• Mommies Magazine: A Haunted House in Your Own Backyard
• Peppers and Pollywogs: Your Very Own Haunted House
• Lifehacker: Ask the Readers: The DIY Haunted house?
• How To Do Things.com: How To Decorate a Haunted House

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