How To Make a Haunted House
- April 13, 2009
- 12,859 Views
Writer
Rachel_Korowitz
Voice Over Artist
Betsy Winchester
Music
Jon Petrow & Lynn Wright
Ditch those namby-pamby clichés like skeleton decals and peeled-grape eyeballs. This year, give your guests a real scare.
You Will Need
- A theme, materials, and sound effects
- Volunteers
- A scary location (optional)
- Blindfolds or flashlights (optional)
Pregnant women, people with heart conditions, and those who are photosensitive to flashing lights, like some epileptics, should not visit haunted houses.
Step 1: Build on a theme
Base your design on a theme. Classics like “insane asylum” or “serial killer-plagued campground” will give you lots of material to play with.
The more thorough and specific your details, the scarier your haunted house will be.
Step 2: Pick a scary location
Consider holding your event at or near a scary location, like an old graveyard.
Make sure it’s a safe — and legal — location. Things will be less scary if the cops shut you down halfway through the night.
Step 3: Work in live-action stunts
Liven up your haunted house with live-action stunts. Enlist a few costumed friends, and have them grab onto guests, create eerie effects, and make stationary tableaus come to life.
Step 4: Incorporate different textures
Incorporate different unidentifiable textures. Create sudden mists using spray bottles and force guests to walk through black thread or clingy cotton webbing, which is available at craft or convenience stores around Halloween.
Step 5: Tailor your sound effects
Instead of the same old cackling witches and clanking chains, tailor sound effects to your theme. Give each room a different soundtrack, and work in a few unexpected noise triggers.
Use silence to your advantage. A lack of sound can help to build suspense.
Step 6: Create a mist
Use a fog machine, which you can rent or buy at a stage or lighting store, to create a ghoulish creeping mist.
Step 7: Set up strobe lights
Use strobe lights to disorient your guests. Set the lights to make the action seem to take place in an eerie slow motion.
Step 8: Use blindfolds
Consider blindfolding your guests and having them feel their way through parts of the house. Alternately, keep things dark, and make your guests find their way with flashlights.
Step 9: Provide one way out
Let guests know at the start that there’s only one way out — the exit at the end of the tour. This single-exit strategy will help to ratchet up the excitement and tension, and keep your guests eagerly pushing forward through your house of horrors.
In 2005, a four-story haunted house named Erebus in Pontiac, Michigan, was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest walk-through haunted attraction.
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Comments (7)
Regarding sensitivity to strobe lights, it is not just epileptics who are susceptible to this. Many people may have sensitivity to strobe effect and not know it. Years ago, though I had experienced strobe lights many times before, one caused me to have a seizure in a carnival fun house. I was tested and found to not have any form of epilepsy. It was simply a sensitivity to strobe effect. It's possible it may never happen again, but I don't take chances. IT COULD HAPPEN TO ANYONE! Don't create an impression that it only happens to some epileptics. Remember that Japanese cartoon that caused hundreds of kids to have seisures with a strobe effect?
The safest way to utilize a strobe light in this type of environment is to use either a slow frequency of flashes, or a few quick flashes with long pauses in between to simulate lightning. Sustained high-frequency flashing is potentially risky. As I said, people won't necessarily know they have this sensitivity - until it happens!
It's unfair to in-effect exclude people like myself who enjoy haunted houses but who don't want to risk the possibility of a strobe effect seizure. It is not a condition on a par with pregnancy or heart ailments and doesn't require a major ";watering down"; of the attraction.
over 3 years ago by earlyfilms
Awsome but one question why put up this viedo in April?
over 2 years ago by cookie6monster411
Good question – this was made in the Emerging Filmmakers Program where filmmakers can choose from all kinds of topics, some seasonal, some not. We just try to keep the pool fresh and fun.
over 2 years ago by HeatherMenicucci
Creepy! Spooky! Awesome!
over 2 years ago by HeatherM
I got a tip, have your guests go in tiny groups and have one of your friends in it then some of your 'actors' can grab them. Its really creepy
over 2 years ago by Magaroonie
eh, why not, it'll be ready for Halloween ;-)
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