Spooky! How to Decorate a Haunted House

People love to be scared and many enterprising people and groups create haunted houses every year to earn a littleextra money. Some of the small local varieties are pretty basic, but the professional houses go all out to bring a little scream to your Halloween.

I remember as a child going to some of the small town ones and being completely unimpressed with the cheap masks I know they bought at the corner store. It wasn’t until college, after I went to a few great haunted houses, that I began to appreciate how much thought goes into the design of them.

What are the essential elements to any good haunted house?

1. Blood, lots of blood: While you don’t want to be flinging blood on your customers, (that’s just a lawsuit waiting to happen) blood should be on anything that’s not nailed down. One universal truth that all special effects people tell is that blood has to be thick. You’re not dealing with Kool-Aid people. Blood should be a viscous fluid along the lines of motor oil or even thicker. You can buy premade blood by the ounce or gallon or you can make your own with a little Karo syrup, water and food coloring.

2. Power tools: Power tools like chainsaws… well, any saw really… will freak people out, but they pose a few issues. You don’t want to cut anyone’s appendages off, that’s just rude. You can either buy prop tools if you are willing to spend the money or take out the blades and chains that actually do the cutting. There is nothing scarier than a masked man with a fake chainsaw chasing after you except for a masked man with a real chainsaw chasing after you.

3. Darkness: The unknown is man’s greatest fear and keeping your customers in the dark is essential. It not only hides your inner working from prying eyes, but gets the customers worked up and lets your actors have an easier job of sneaking up on them. Windows should be covered with black paint or if you want something more elegant and classical then thick blood red curtains will do the trick. Bad things lie in the darkness, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be stylish as well.

4. Medical Equipment: Old dentists’ chairs, medical tools and other paraphernalia will scare the heck out of anyone. You should have seen some of the torture equipment doctors used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So where do you find such apparatuses? Auctions are a good place to start, but the easiest place is eBay. You can pretty much find any strange torture device on eBay without a problem. That might actually be scarier that the haunted house.

5. Body parts: Ripped off legs and arms, boney skeletons, bowls of eyeballs and any other fleshy or bony appendage are perfect haunted house flair. Whether you buy the stuff from a prop store even the homemade route, they are guaranteed to bring the scary. Body parts added with the fake blood equals party.

Haunted houses are a Halloween staple and perfect for family functions, fundraisers and just plain old profit based business. Don’t just buy a few masks and expect people to be scared. Movies are so realistic these days that unless you put some effort in the design of the haunted house, then you’re customers will get their scare on somewhere else.

Image Source: flickr.com/photos/shanegorski/2324747282/

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