Holloween Tips And Advice? (Haunted Houses!)?

This Halloween me and a bunch of my friends were planning on making a haunted house. We are going to use a garage (it has a garage door at one end and an exit at the other, not attached to the house.) its about a one car garage i guess? and we need some CHEAP ideas for our haunted house. Holloween Tips And Advice? (Haunted Houses!)?
I have been doing home haunts for the past 15 years and money is always an issue. I got very tired of buying props as they are so expensive, so we started making all of our own props. It's pretty easy to do and there are tons of websites with step by step directions.





First off make some walls! If you are doing them inside what we did is to put eye bolts into the studs of the walls, then run cables (small cable is pretty cheap and is more durable than rope) then buy black plastic (at the hardware store in the paint department) drape over a couple inches and use zipties to secure it to the cables. Run a few across the other direction, then cut out your walkway doors.





Here are a few ideas that are cheap to work on the look of your haunted house.





If anyone will be passing near windows,


Paint them with a water based paint. We had an illusion inside one of the windows and made people walk up to look inside. A ';peppers ghost'; or ';flying crank ghost'; illusion looks great. If you can't do any of that just cutting out a silhouette and placing a red,black, or any eerie light in the room will create the right effect.





I took large dead tree branches about 4-6 feet tall ones and screwed them together to make dead trees.





The bagged cobwebs are inexpensive and can create a great look as well as protect people from touching your props.





If you have the time and effort making a bottomless pit is a great effect especially outside where it is more believable.





Fog is of course important! But if you have an old cooler you can make a fog chiller to chill the fog keeping it creeping along the ground instead of just flying up and away.





Making gravestones is good! An added touch is to take a dark towel, place it in front of the grave, cover it with dirt then place a hand or head like it's a fresh grave and something's coming out.





Get a couple of spot lights paint them red (spray paint on regular bulbs works) and highlight some of your better props. It also works well when you want their attention away from where an actor may be hiding to scare.





A couple of full sized stuffed dummy's laying around get their guards down so that when you dress an actor the same way and make it obvious that they are stuffed, when the people walk by that when you strike!





Well hope those helped!


You can check out what we have done for the past few years on our website, www.FernleyHalloween.com , although I have not updated it from last year. We started just like you and now is a small town we had over 1200 people and the TV and News papers both did stories on us.





Source(s):


Check out www.hauntershangout.com for some prop building ideas too.Holloween Tips And Advice? (Haunted Houses!)?
You definetly need to get spider webs but you can get that at the dollar store. We made a haunted house with our porch and wat we did was put up wood all around it to make it a room. We put up black plastic table cloths on the wood so it would be black. Then we made a dead bride and groom. We had a scare crow so we used its body and then put my dads shirt and a pair of pants on it. We had a table out on our porch and we set it like a regular table. We even had an empty bottle of tequila LOL! I think you should kind of make a maze. You can make tombstones out of wood and spray paint them. You can also make a dead bride with an old table cloth made of lace or something like that. A few of you should dress up really scary and hide in the garage and scare people who are in there. Another idea is to hang up skulls in different places, spiders, and ghosts. Get a black light for the entrance and the exit so it even looks spooky outside. Put severed hands and feet and fingers every where. You can even make fake blood and put it close to the fingers and stuff. Another idea is make a body out of garbage bags and make it look like a person but put the head next to it and do the blood thing also. Well hope you have fun and just do a bunch of scary things. I love spiders LOL cause so many people are afraid of spiders LOL. Hope you have fun!
I would first suggest extending it out to the lawn. A good graveyard can be made with some 1 1/2 inch styrofoam (most home improvement stores sell it in 10' by 6' sheets for about $10... you can make a whole graveyard out of one sheet if you cut it right), some grey spray paint, and some old wire coat hangers to stake them into the ground.





inside, I would first clear out anything sharp, and anything you don't want stolen. Get some old sheets and paint a backdrop. If you know someone who works at a warehouse get your hands on some good sized cardboard boxes. They're great for making pillars and coffins.





Stop by a discount store (Big Lots, Dollar General, etc) and get some cheap props. I've found 4' skeletons for about $8 each in the past, and they're great. You can do either store bought spider webs, or pick up some white yarn and weave your own (which is time consuming, but the effect is impressive if done well).





I also recommend a CD player with some suitably eerie sound effects or music, and some cheap flood lights with colored light bulbs (I like red, green, or blue, depending on the mood I'm trying to set).





If you can afford it, a black light or two are really nifty, especially if you can get your hands on some flourescent paint or fabric. I've got a whole collection of black lights I've pick up for a few dollars at garage sales, though it might be too late in the season to find them there.
Black garbage bags if you want to make a hall way (doubles the length)





Make a person into a scarecrow in the dark and have him jump up.





Make a person hide in the rafters and scream and grab at people (completely freaked me out)





Have dark lights (black painted lights not black lights) so that people can't see everything. It makes it more scary!





Use the candy as a way to scare people. Have a fake bowl and someone hiding under the table with their hand hiding in the fake bowl. Hide their hand with candy and have them grab people when they go to get the candy! :)