So, moving on. I’ll focus on Abby to try to throw off my gloomy mood.
This year, my mom has been thinking about moving. Her consideration on this prompted me to remind Mike of an idea we had had years ago – about creating a Halloween haunted house under mom’s house. Unfortunately Abby overheard us and jumped at the idea to use her birthday party as an excuse to finally, finally, make a haunted house. (Actually, I was the one who planted the idea. I didn’t want to make a birthday party and a haunted house. But I was willing to roll the two together! And so was Abby.)
Now, as some of you may remember from several years’ worth of posts, I’ve worked on haunted houses at work. We tend to create one every other year, or every one out of three years, it depends. So I’ve helped make three haunted houses at VSP. And we’re not talking about a room. I mean a whole series of rooms, fully tripped out. Each room or space would usually have a theme or one dramatic “trick” to it that would really be an eye opener. The only thing that I appreciated about making these haunted houses at work was to see the creativity from the other people on my team. I mean, some of the things they came up with was really impressive. Aside from that, haunted houses are a hell of a lot of work. If I hadn’t have been getting paid for it, I doubt I would have done it.
Anyhoo, here are some of my tips when creating a haunted house. Mind you, this is for creating/filling up a large space. Decorating one room would have different rules, if you ask me. So, again, this is for creating creepy effects in a large space.
1) Focus on one gimmick/trick/effect for one room/space. Make that one thing as detailed and as real as possible. Everything else in the room should be there only as support for that one detailed item.
2) Actors are a MUST for larger haunted houses. The actor themselves could be the primary effect for any room, or they could be the magic that makes things float or walls move or ghosts moan. Actors are a necessity.
3) Aside from the one trick, all the other items should be big. I mean “big” as in large size-wise, or a mass collection of smaller things. But I also mean undetailed. Don’t waste your time on these items aside from gathering them all and/or installing them all.
4) Use other sensory stimuli too. Crunchy leaves to walk on, laser lights or moving visions, spooky sounds or common noises used uncommonly, puffs of air on your neck. Smells can be super powerful too. And I cannot overstate the importance of lighting in a haunted house – strobe lights, black lights, flickering lights, bright lights, you name it.
5) Use common things as much as possible. Tree branches, leaves, dirt, plywood, cardboard, aluminum foil, paper plates, glow sticks, disguised Christmas lights, paint, garbage bags, you name it.
That’s it. Those are my basic tips. Some of the best effects I saw from VSP’s haunted houses included number 3 and 4. For example, one room was supposed to look like a cemetery. They actually brought piles of dirt and sod inside the abandoned rooms in the building. Smelling the fresh sod inside the room was unexpectedly creepy. Another room was supposed to look like a Deliverance’s swampy redneck cabin. They hauled in piles of fall leaves and scattered them all over the room. The smell of wet, decomposing leaves mixed with bags and bags of empty alcohol bottles was amazingly powerful. To add to the Deliverance experience, they cut a sound track of a pig being slaughtered – eewww, gross!
Now, on to Abby’s haunted house. It was pretty funny when I first walked Mike and Lee through the house and gave them my ideas. They both blinked and stared at me blankly. Lee even said, “that’s it?” Yep. Of course, when I laid out the rough plan I didn’t tell them about all of the “fluff” I envisioned going into the spaces; I just focused on the primary effect in each room. Plus, I think Lee and Mike were picturing a haunted house with gruesome effects. I was skipping all of the uber gross and gory stuff in favor of more classic stuff that young kids Abby’s age wouldn’t be grossed out by. In the HH at work, we had two headed baby zombies eating hands and legs. Disgusting! I didn’t want stuff like that in Abby’s HH. So, Lee and Mike were a little underwhelmed and unimpressed.
This is a common issue with some people who need to see things before they can get excited about it. Working on HHs at VSP, I came across the same thing. Some people couldn’t get excited about the project until it started to take shape. Once the HH was molded, people could see where effects could go. Corners and nooks, low ceilings or dead ends suddenly became blank canvases with which to work. I think the envisioning into reality of the HH creation is where most people become overwhelmed. So, at this point, I get everyone to focus on building the walls. Once the walls go in, the blank canvas is ready. My number one tip for putting in walls is to use rolls of plastic table clothes from party stores. They are fairly thin but they get the job done and they’re cheaper than just about anything else.
Other options could include drop clothes or outdoor garbage bags cut open to make large rectangles. A large portion of your HH budget will be spent on walls. I spent $85 on the wall coverings alone. I was lucky enough to use all of the house support studs to staple the walls to, so I didn’t have to spend any more money on the framework. Yay!
Next, I spent serious time on the big effects in each room. The first room was to house my ghost. Remember her? I made her about two years ago. She still looks great. Add some ghost sounds and a cool light, maybe a fan to blow around her base, and she would positively float.
Aside from figuring out where exactly and how to mount her, I was done with the first room.
The second room was to be the home of Shelob the spider and one life-sized spider victim. Remember this spider victim from years ago? Yeah, I still had all the supplies to recreate the victim. No problem. The spider would be another matter. I needed a giant spider. So I went about creating one out of one of Abby’s giant bounce balls and garbage bags rolled up into legs.
Pics taken with the lights on:
Adhere it all together with black duct tape, add some glow in the dark eyes and hair on the legs and I was done. Ok, see the detail on the spider victim? Nope, there is none. It’s a vaguely human shaped blob of white material and spider webs with spiders.
That’s it. Same with the spider. It’s fairly large with almost no details. Add tree branches, a heck of a lot of spider webbing, black lights to make things glow and the poor spider victim and this room was done!
The next room would be where the primary scare was located. This would be an actor dressed as a werewolf. I didn’t need too many props here, just some bones for the wolf to gnaw on.
The last space was a mystery touch table (Abby’s suggestion). This table would be staffed with another actor dressed as a witch or gypsy who had disgusting items on display. I let Abby pick which disgusting items to touch. She settled on trolls teeth and tongues, monkey brains, and a severed hand with maggots.
The witches table was super easy – plastic folding table, spare fabric draped over it, old Moroccan lanterns with tea lights inside, fake crows and rats all around, a candelabra, a spider chandelier, mom made some cool glowing eyes and the touch box themselves.
We wrapped small boxes in garbage bags and filled them with dried beans and dried apricots (troll teeth and tongues), spaghetti in a brain mold which did not work well (monkey brains), and a medical glove with flour inside on a mound of over cooked rice (severed hands with maggots). The glove with flour inside was incredibly real feeling. I highly recommend it! The maggots came out great too! Totally gross feeling.
I was able to use props from everyone. Jack donated some scary ghouls and a wicked cool bone curtain that automatically parts for whomever comes close.
Someone from work donated other scary things. Someone else let us borrow their stage lights, which worked wonders on our ghost! Lee created all of the spooky sounds from scratch and installed the sound system. Mike ran all over the house, yard and garage to figure out all of the wonky ways to hang, mount, prop, or support all of the things we needed in there. He also figured out all of the electrical. Mom had a ton of kiddie Halloween décor which we used to dress up the party table.
Speaking of, there was still a party to plan.
The invites were little black boxes with an orange scrolls attached to the top (I didn’t snap a pic of them drat it all!). The scroll was the invite itself. Inside the box were two eyes! So, to carry the creepy theme, Lee helped me bake a giant eyeball cake and cupcakes.
I also made several treats that I discovered on Pinterest. (Yes, I’m totally addicted to Pinterest now. Ergh!) Look at these snacks! Cuties made to look like jack o lanterns!
Too cute. Apple slices with peanut butter and marshmallows look like lips and teeth.
The kids loved them! The jack o lantern carrot platter was another hit.
And, to keep the party going while kids went through the haunted house, I set up some basic carnival games to keep the other kids occupied.
One mom even had the kids shout out “eyeballs” for every photo. It worked like a charm. Look at all those happy faces! I know my little witch had a blast!
All told, I spent about $25 more on this haunted house party than I did on Abby's Lego birthday party. Not bad at all.
And the haunted house? Yeah, we had some seriously impressed adults give us a lot of praise. One said it was the best haunted house they had seen in a long time. One said it was good enough to charge money for. And one neighbor said we should have KCRA 3, a local news station, come out for a tour of the place (they sometimes do segments on personal haunted houses or well decorated homes during Halloween and Christmas.) Awww, shucks!
Here are all the people who made this fun memory happen. Thanks, guys!!
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