Thread: haunt ideas

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Insane Asylum Haunted House room ideas!?
Awesome Scares!?
Asylum Prop making ideas!?
Insane Asylum Haunted House name!?
Any ideas will be greatly appreciated!

Floor Plan Design!?
We have big space.

So many questions! There are many possible ways to do a haunt, so the first thing to do is an assesment of what you already have to work with.

First, how about a little background? You say "we have big space"; is this a private home or a retail/public space? Is it many rooms or one large open area? is there just one entrance/exit, or can patrons enter one way, and exit through a side/back entrance? If it's a large open area, are you allowed to put up temporary walls, doors, etc?

Do you have a limited budget, large budget, or no budget at all? Do you have volunteers to build stuff? Will you have live actors in the haunt, or do you want to rely primarily on props and special effects? Will you have guided group tours, or will it just be a walk-through at the patron's leisure?

Here are a few thoughts. Please bear with me, I try to organize my thoughts, but sometimes I can tend to ramble on:

For the entrance (or possibly somewhere inside the haunt if the outside is inaccessible), do a search under 'props' for "asylum door prop". It's a really cool prop, and it really makes for a great scare. If you have a large budget, there is a company you can buy it from, but it's very expensive. The folks here have figured out ways to make it yourself for a lot less

If you're doing a haunted asylum, I'm guessing you'll want decor/furniture/instruments etc. from the early to mid 20th century. I would have a reception office, maybe a large 'community room', one or two 'treatment rooms', and some patient bedrooms. Have bars or metal grates over all the windows.

In the reception office, maybe a security guard station with several black-and-white tv monitors for various security cameras. If you use actual security cameras, you could make a hidden 'control center' to monitor the haunt, and to coordinate actions when a group is in a specific place for a specific scare.
For example,a group is walking down a hallway towards one of the 'treatment rooms'; when the group is almost to the room's door, the control center sends a prompt (maybe a small flashing light in the room) to an actor/actress dressed as a patient waiting inside that room. On cue that actor/actress bolts loudly out of the room (leaving the door wide open), screaming down the hallway away from the group, and ducks into a room, or around a corner further down the hall. Scare #1. As the group passes the open door, they look in to see the body of a doctor slumped over a table with a giant syringe sticking out of his back. Scare # 2. Now the interesting thing is this group now realizes they have to walk down the hallway, past the room or corner that the escaped patient just went into. This sets up scare #3. Their imaginations are working now, anticipating what's waiting down the hallway.



For the 'community room', have old couches and chairs around the room. An old black-and-white TV with a static-y, rolling picture. Have several patients behaving erratically (rocking in place, talking to themselves, staring into space, other OCD behaviors). Have one patient carrying on a lively conversation with a second patient who's staring blankly and silently at the floor, unaware of the first patient. Have one walking around with an unlit cigarette approach the patrons asking for a light. Have a female patient carrying a babydoll hold it out towards the patrons, saying (in a nervous, twitchy, sort of way) "Wanna see my baby? It's my baby!", repetitively.

For one of the 'treatment' rooms, maybe dentist-chairs (or something similar) with leather tie-down straps fro the wrists and ankles. In the other, you could build a 'shock-treatment' chair with an animatronic dummy that shakes when zapped. Also, try to find antique doctor and dentist tools (the cruder, the better) to have laying around on tables and cabinets. Antique-looking leg irons, handcuffs, and straightjackets.
Old, dirty bottles, flasks, test tubes, lab equipment, etc. Make the walls dirty and dingy. Have dark brown or black 'build-up' in corners, cracks and crevices to look like old, dried blood, and a few spatters of fresh blood here and there.

Have some of the rooms brightly lit, but have others with low lighting or erratically flickering lights. There's a tutorial on the forums somewhere on how to make an incandescent light bulb flicker by using a ballast regulator from a fluorescent light.

Add sound effects off in other rooms. Occasional screams, moans, cries, and sounds of torture, but sparingly and not at regular intervals. If they hear moans and screams every 5 seconds, it doesn't work. Less is more. Maybe throw in a chain dragging, power drills or other power tools, banging sounds, breaking glass, thumps, bumps, and crazy-sounding laughter.

As far as the name, maybe look for something related to a local legend, or a local infamous historical figure.

If you go to http://hauntproject.com/, you'll find lots of good tutorials (including some of the projects I mentioned here), as well as other possible ideas.

Hope this helps.

wow Pumpkinhead....you're obviously talking form experience there. Id love to hear a similar guide to scary/haunted circus theme sometime.

Well let me start off by saying thank you for all those helpfull ideas!
And to answer your first question we have alot of space - 6 rooms and one huge open area that we can build walls to make more rooms.
This is a public area that one of our volunters let us use.
We have an entrance and a exit off the side of the building.
As far as costumes we have doctors, nurses, and patient costumes.
We have a few props and we have people that can build just need ideas on what to build. We have a low budget though. -bummer.
We will have live actors like 17 i think.
Thanks for all the ideas!