Create the spookiest entertainment on the block, and terrify children and adults alike on Halloween night! Or make it the setting for a remember-it-forever Halloween costume party. Here are 13 steps to creating... the HAUNTED HOUSE. (Not recommended for small or sensitive children)
1) Get permission from your folks to use your house (preferably the basement) for your Halloween haunted house. Make sure the space is big enough to do everything you want to do.
2) Draw up a plan. Make a diagram of the space available, and figure out which things you want to have in your haunted house (from the list below) and where it might go. Plan an entrance and an exit, so you can lead people in and out without bumping into other people.
3) Make gravestones. Buy large pieces of grey construction paper and cut them into the shape of headstones. Use a black magic marker to write on the headstones, using your creativity. You can do classic epitaphs like "Here lies John Smith, 1902 - 1992", or make them super-creepy, such as "Here lies Big Bob, Died in anguish." Tack or tape them along the bottom of the walls to simulate real gravestones. If you want to get more intricate, make realistic looking gravestones.
4) Use black plastic garbage bags to cover windows for darkness. Keep the main overhead lights turned off, and provide eerie lighting using lots of black and red candles. Or, you could use small lamps with red or black lightbulbs (available at party stores or drugstores).
5) Get your friends or family to help you make a tape recording of scary sounds, or buy a "sounds of terror" cd from the local music store. Keep the sounds playing whenever people are inside the house for a weird and frightening sensory experience. Keep scary music going too, as well as scary sounds. There are lots of good Halloween compilation cds available at music stores. Or, put on some Icelandic trance music you've got in your cd collection.
6) Make a bowl of eyeballs. Buy large grapes at the fruit store and carefully peel off the skins. Put them in a chilled bowl (keep the bowl in the fridge until you begin your haunted house tour). Invite people to touch them. Tell people in a spooky voice, "These are the eyeballs of murdered witches."
7) Buy Styrofoam heads from a beauty supply house and turn them into monsters or murdered beauty queens to put on display. Make the heads look "once alive" by using Halloween wigs for hair and Halloween makeup for the faces. Stick plastic knives into the heads and pour fake blood around the "wounds." Line the heads up along a table and create a horrible story to tell guests, about the serial killer who murdered these folks and chopped off their heads with an axe. For extra special effect, have the axe there dripping with blood! (A fake axe of course, with fake blood, from a Halloween supply shop).
8) Enlist the help of a friend to hide behind a curtain or chair, and spritz visitor's faces with cold water as they walk through the dark. Tell visitors they have been sprayed by deadly spitting black widow spiders.
9) Create a creepy "dead hand." Start the day before the party. Fill a rubber kitchen glove to the wrist with water turned green with green food coloring. Tie the glove's end tightly with a rubber band or two, make sure it's not leaking, then put it into the freezer. Right before the party, carefully unwrap the frozen hand by slowly peeling off the glove. Fill a clear (plastic or glass) punch bowl with cold, green colored water (food coloring again), and float the frozen "dead" hand in it. Whose hand is it? Maybe your great grandfather's, maybe the innocent victim you slaughtered - it's up to you what to tell people!
10) Stretch fake spider webbing (available in drugstore Halloween aisles) around the room. Spray it with water from plant mister. Make sure it's placed so people will have to brush it away from their faces as they walk through certain parts of the room.
11) If you're doing a walk-through haunted house, get an adult or a big friend to dress up as a monster (Frankenstein, a serial killer, Dracula, etc.) and hide near the exit. Just before people go out, the "monster" should leap out and scare the daylights out of them!
12) If you've having people to stay and party in your haunted house, see if you can convince a friend to play vampire. They should dress in a vampire costume and hide in a certain part of the house where people might go, but not the main party room. (Not the bathroom though!) Guests shouldn't seem them until they are surprise attacked! Or, you can get your vampire friend to lie under a blanket where they are hidden in plain view. The idea is for them to stay perfectly still for ages, then suddenly sit up and scream, scaring the whole room at once!
13) Create insect blood punch for your thirsty guests. Start the day before the party by preparing the insect ice cubes. Buy a bunch of plastic ants and beetles at a toy store or the drugstore's Halloween section. Wash the bugs (to clean them off) and then put a bug or two in each section of an empty ice tray. Fill the tray with water and pop into the freezer. (Do as many trays at a time as possible). The next day, just before the guests are set to arrive, fill a large punch bowl with red fruit punch. Make it sickly looking by mixing in some blue food coloring. Add the buggy ice cubes (they should be well frozen now) and have plastic cups on hand, so you can offer people a refreshing drink of "Zombie Blood."
About the Author:
Special thanks to our sister site, MyJellyBean, for providing this fun article!
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4) Use black plastic garbage bags to cover windows for darkness. Keep the main overhead lights turned off, and provide eerie lighting using lots of black and red candles. Or, you could use small lamps with red or black lightbulbs (available at party stores or drugstores).
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