How to Make your Own Haunted House, Part 2: 10 Scary Ideas
by Ellen Ambrose in General / 10.16.08
Yesterday, I showed you how to set the stage for hosting the best haunted house. Now, that you’ve created a frightening environment, learn how to really scare the pants off your visitors.
Here are 10 big scare ideas that are sure to please:
1. If you have a crazed, bloody person with a heavy iron hammer pounding on a board with bloody body parts scattered all around, it creates confusion and it is very scary. Add a strobe light and it gets scarier.
Extra Thick Blood
2. Create complete darkness and have a monster slip into the pathway and gently grab the visitors hand. When they turn around, they will practically have a heart attack.
3. Mount a piece of clear plexiglass and have two scary looking people struggling in a fight behind it. When the visitor walks up, have one of them hit the plexiglass with a hammer creating a very loud, frightening sound and situation. The person will not like it, guaranteed. This one also looks good with a strobe light but it is not required.
4. Create and illusion by covering a corner area in a fabric dot or graphic pattern and add a strobe light and a smoke machine. Then have a person covered in the same dot or graphic print. In the dark, you will not be able to see person as they will blend into pattern with smoke and strobe lights. Have person lunge out at the appropriate time and spray silly string in visitor’s face.
5. Have a grim reaper type person dressed in all black come out of the shadows with a chain saw (with sharp blade removed) and chase the visitor down the path to the next big scare. You can also use a skill saw without the blade to create the same noise effect. Here is one of our favorite Grim Reaper costumes:
Men’s Grim Reaper Halloween Costume
6. Include in your fright house a dead body laying on a slab under a sheet with just his toe (with toe tag on) sticking out. Have the body raise up at the appropriate time.
7. If your garage is big enough, you can leave a car parked in it with the low beam lights on. Shoe polish words like “bloody” and “dead body inside” on the windows and put dry ice in a pot of water inside to create smoke effect. People will look into the car to see what is going on. When they look inside the car, have a person dressed like Freddy Krueger come reeling out from underneath the car on a mechanic’s dolly and grab the persons ankles. Check out this awesome Freddy costume:
Men’s Freddy Krueger Costume - Nightmare on Elm Street
8. Build a cage out of PVC pipe with a very loud, werewolf type in it. Have the cage break away and open right when the visitor passes by.
Mens Werewolf Costume - Full Moon
9. In total darkness, mount different clown masks on the wall with a black light. Have a volunteer dressed in all black wearing a clown mask stand near the wall with clown masks. The darkness and the black light will create the illusion that all the clown masks are mounted on the wall (including person’s mask). Have the person in the real clown mask step out and raise a fake butchers knife at the visitor.
Here’s a list of some of our favorite clown masks:
Evil Clown Mask - Crazy
10. Put out a large bowl of candy near the exit. The visitors think it is safe and over and when they grab a piece of candy at the exit. At this point, bring out the chainsaw without the blade or you can have a monster jump out and scare them. Or, if you want to go the sweeter route, have a cute kid in a candy costume handing out candy at the end. Hey, haunted house or not, kids are dang cute in Halloween costumes.
Finally, here are some examples of filler props that you can use in between your big scares:
- smoke machine
- boiling cauldren (dry ice, glow stick, water)
- a large pickle jar with an alien floating inside water
- spider web decoration - black
- skeletons
- hairy vampire bat decoration
- broomstick with ghoulish mask and black gown standing in a corner still.
- dead person hanging from noose (fake of course)
- artificial rising mummies and ghouls
- Bloody handprints on walls. To make good blood, use peanut butter, water and red food coloring. Mix to desired consistentcy.
Last but not least, don’t forget to give your volunteers a rest every hour or so and provide plenty of drinking water. You will need extra people who can fill in for those who are taking a quick break. People will lose their voices from all the screaming and it is absolutely exhausting scaring people over and over again.
You will have a lot of fun with this project and the kids will love you for it. Good luck to you in your terror adventure. If you have any ideas, please share them in the comment section.
Check out these Halloween video tutorials for your haunted house project:
Create Scrapes & Injuries Using Makeup
Create Burn Scars like Freddy Krueger
How to Apply a Latex Prosthetic (like Heath Ledger as The Joker in Dark Knight)
YOUR NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH ANYONE! ITS ILLAGEL!
why its only i quick touch of the hand my god you retard
this message is fo yo….your an idiot
These are GREAT IDEAS!!! I used them on my haunted house, I made just about over 100$ and got in the newspaper!!!! THANKS!!!
No, Jason dude that states that “yo” is retarded ( who also does not run a haunt or know ANYHTING about haunting ) you’re retarded. BUT, if you want to prove your case, why don’t you try it yourself.
Great ideas, though.
er, uh Jacob
your the idiot’s for thinking you can touch people that’s how you get sued now days many people do notlike being touched and can see that as forcing or sexual and sue you…………………… Also wonder if someone comes in your haunted house you scratch them by accident while touching and the bleed there are people out there with medical issues sexually stuff wrong with them like aids you don’t know who is coming in your haunted house & it’s all smart thinking.
for those of you who do not know, it is not illegal to touch someone in a haunted house although most haunted houses tell their actors not to touch for a few reasons:
1. when people are scared, they swing at things thus creating a danger for you and your actors.
2. You (the haunt owner) are liable for all damages and injury caused to your customers and your actors and can be sued.
3. If it is just a local haunt, like a neighborhood haunt, most people dont worry about the NO TOUCH rule although, if you do your job right and do manage to scare the crap out of your guest, chances are you will (at some pint) get swung at. (by the way, the big tough men are the biggest sissys)
4. If you can prevent touching, you can eliminate the stupid lawsuits people file (like the “McDonald’s coffee is too hot i burnt myself” lawsuit.) which in this case can include sexual harassment(touching in the dark)
This Would Be The Best Haunted House I Have Ever Been To!!!
Just a note yes they MAY sue for sexual harassment but could legally prosecute for text book simple assault. That said you can substitute an actor touching your scare victims with something like say a very small diameter air line hooked up to a low pressure air that makes the little air lines flop around harmlessly brushing the legs of visitors and hissing air across their ankles. They are not touched by a person and therfore can not claim assault or unwanted sexual contact. just an idea for yas. Happy haunting
thanks so much for sharing your ideas. I’m going to use the clown mask and alien baby ideas in our community spook house. (and make some kids cry) Thanks again
me and hubby or slowly growing or haunted house…this next year will be our 4th haunted house and proably the bigest…we our going to be starting alot of projects this summer and hope to be done in time for halloween >_<…I love your ideas and will be using a few this year…I also like to use baby dolls for props…I take old electronics and beat them up with a hammer…once you got all the guts out you then glue or stick in what you want on to the dolls..I also like to burn the dolls with a ligther…I’ve tryed a few other way but I find that a ligther gives you the most control…When burning do it outside it stinks!!…I like to call them my borged franken babies…I also use stables and safty pins to get the scary feeling…m end goal is to make a huge scary childs room with all this wickedly evil little dools.
ive been doing haunted houses for the past 5 years and my buddy and his dad have been doing it for the past 21 years and in all those years we/they have never been sued for touching. its more up to the scarier to decide that the scaree is acceptable to be touched and when you do touch, you only touch shoulders, hair and ankles. and no where else.
Thanks for the idea’s. We aren’t allowed to touch people. But the crawling things on the floor is good!! One year a teenager about 18 punched a 7 year old in the face just because she scared him. Then we could sue for that!!haha! :)
oooh im scaaaaaaaaared
i think it is a very cool website because it inspired me to start my haunted house. but i didn’t like the scary clown
I think they are some great ideas! The people who that you can get sued well the 13th floor you have to sign a waver because they can grab you and there are real snakes and spiders.
My family and I did a haunted house last year and it was one of the scariest I would say. But what we figured out was that the people in the middle are usually the scared ones. Just FYI =)
I’m SO glad none of these ideas have anything about grapes or operation rooms. That’s just corny. . .
Unless you’re really into some kinky stuff, how can touching someone’s ankle be considered sexual harrassment? People are so paranoid and out to get each other so much anymore, this simply takes the fun out of doing anything as simple as putting on a haunted house. My God!
Create a dark hallway that’s skinny and PITCH black. Hang items down such as fuzzy scarves or stuffed animals so when people walk into them they will not know what it is.
It’s probably better to just avoid the whole touching thing with your live hand and use a fake hand attached to a stick or something. You could reach out further with it anyway in order to avoid getting slugged in the face by a guest.