Thread: College Haunted House

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Hey everyone, I'm currently a student at Emory and I'm chair of the student activity committee (SAC) and 2 years ago we started Halloweek. We have 1 nights designated for scaring ppl. A "Haunted Coffee House". I'm looking to start planning stuff now since the people who ran it last year planned each event a day before and had no spirit/enthusiasm.

To give you an idea of what Haunted Coffee House is. We have an old building that's divide into 2 sections w/ 2 doorways but w/ no doors. There a side entrance that leads to the back, which is where I want the people to enter through. In the rear section (where we do the haunted house it's pretty big (75ft x100ft x8 1/2ft) but only about 2/3 can be used since there a small stage and a pool table in the back. The room is all painted black with white writing on the walls. What we did last year was use trash bags to create hallways snaking through the area we were able to get 4 hallways but we didn't have props.

I was thinking to show some sort of short clip in the entrance along with someone outside to scare them. and to play some sort of sound track like THIS ONE or if someone can recommend something else.

Are current supplies consist of 3 strobes, a lot of black lights bulbs, 3 fluorescent tube black light, and 2 small fog machines. We have speakers and a sound board annd a lot of SAC members that could help in the house. We would have about $250 budget for the Haunted Coffee House.

I was told that we couldn't use the fog machine indoors because it would set off the smoke alarm. But I see this don't at at Halloween Horror Nights and other houses. Is this true?

I'm not sure what theme to go with, I was thinking asylum since it wouldn't require any special mask. Any ideas would be helpful. and what are some different scenes or scare area I could use.

Thanks in advance.
Chris

Zombies are very DIY costumes. Tattered clothes, a little (or a lot) of fake blood, and you're good to go. I use the black plastic drop cloth from the paint section as wall material. You can get 8' wide, and I find it easier to use (cut to length by pressing down a piece of 1x at the cut length before you unfold it, then use a box cutter). I do a maze with mine, which throws people completely off in the the dark. With black lights, try a dot room. Using black sheets or landscape fabric (see previous thread), spray or paint fluorescent dots, skulls, splatters, etc. and hang up the sheets in a row. Freaky effect (search on dot room in this forum for more details). I put strobes in my dot rooms to amp the confusion. I scare teenagers in a garage haunt every year. Scaring college kids sounds like great fun!

If I were to do zombie theme, how would a dot room be incorporated into the theme. Also, if I were to use the plastic black drop cloth, how much light does it reflect and is 2mm to thin?

clowns. DIY make up on your face. maybe some wounds. some blood. make it 3d? we did this last year at my haunted house. We painted tons of dots with a type of paint that looks 3d under black light. buy cheap 3d glasses off online. should look cool.

How would you make it 3d beside using that paint?

lots of black light. or big black lights that cover large areas.

Dot rooms can be done with any repeating pattern, so you could use the symbol for biohazard, or something like that. The term "dot room" is kind of a generic term for a room with repeating patterns under blacklight. The 3D solares is referring to is Chromadepth. Check out terra's pages for tutorials and how-to's (search for terra or chomadepth). She does awesome 3D. I've found that even without the glasses, my dot room looks very 3D. I used 4 colors of fluorescent paint for the dots. The blue receeds and the orange looks closer. You could use only red and blue paint and do blood splatter (the red being fresh blood, the blue being old blood). Splattering paint would be easy. Check dick blick for good prices on true fluorescent paint.

As for the black plastic - I use 4 mil drop cloth that you can buy at Home Depot, Lowe's, in the paint department. It's 8' wide and 100' long for about $40. 6 mil is too thick, 2 mil might tear too easily. It is somewhat reflective, but really not noticeable with blacklights. To make 3D panels or a dot room, you will need something other than the plastic. Landscape fabric works well (though the best kind was available at Home Depot and is now brown, not black). Terra has a couple of tutorials on this as well. I used single bed black sheets from Walmart (about $5 each, approx 8'x6') for the dot room. Another thing I found is that even though the paint soaks in and the dots don't look very bright under regular lighting, they are still brilliant under blacklight.

Hope this answers your questions.

I would get to know people in the Drama Department. They could help you out with Lighting and Sound, two critical components. Plus, being persons with a penchant for entertaining, you could probably start to recruit scareactors.