Thread: "Haunted House" help?

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Was asked today to help develop a haunted house with a "haunted hayride for late October in upstate NY. The space to be converted is a large garage with a cement floor, around 100 x 80 square feet (possible more)....

Anyone have some really good ideas they'd care to contribute??

Spookmaster

You could put pumpkins, and ghosts, and stuff in it.

I dunno.... I'm new here.

The first thing you might want to do is think of a theme. I know its "Halloween" but try to narrow it down a bit, so you don't go into system overload. You could find yourself putting so much effort into your haunt that you end up with a bunch of stuff that has no continuity

WHEW!

Now that I'm done preaching, a few themes you may consider in no particular order:

1. Pirates
2. Mad Scientist Lab
3. Classic Monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf-man, Invisible man, etc)
4. Psychos (Freddie, Jason, Michael Myers, Hannibal Lecter)
5. Aliens
6. Classic Haunted House (Ghosts, JOL's, Scarecrows. crate creatures, grim reapers, skeletons, torture wheels, shackle's & chains etc.

Hope this helps, Marc V.

I would think in a space that large, you should plan on about 12 scenes at a minimum, so I guess your next step would be to look at what kind of haunted house it's going to be. If it's a for profit operation, and you have a good budget for props, your needs are going to be a lot different than if it's a not-for-profit operation.

Agree, you need to establish some parameters. Decide on a theme, and think about if you want to divide the space into actual rooms with scenes, or do you want it to be mostly a dark maze with small, open spaces for a few vignette-type scenes. Are you also expected to run a haunted hayrack ride with it? Will have to also consider the logistics of the waiting room & ticket sales, as well as where your scare-actors come in & out of the house, lighting and things like emergency exits.

I know that seems like a lot, but if you can get some things set first, the rest will most likely come easier.

It sounds like this is in conjunction with the hayride? If that is the case I think a theme might be a bit easier to decide. It might be good to see what route the hayride is going and build off of that to create a more standardised theme. Additionally you can try to use the area to your advantage. What is the building space itself like? And what is the area around the building like on the outside and what sort of condition is it in? From just the very brief description of the inside seems like you could make a sort of scientists lab or a dungeon of sorts. Play up on the space and you can probably get some great ideas from it!

Ween has some great points as well that are easy to overlook and you definitely need to consider as well. Easy to forget but those can really set your haunt apart from others.

I got another idea, how about a haunted carnival? You could use the hayride as a precursor to the 100x80 foot space. Kind of like your bringing people to the fun. The driver can be some type of weird goulish coachman with a top hat and rideing crop. After the ride he drops folks off at the "Kreepy Karnival". A few Killer Klown masks on maniquins standing outside holding balloons. Inside you can have lots of different games with Halloween themes.

"Shoot the Zombie" cardboard or wood cut out of a zombie with holes drilled in his arms,legs, torso, and head. The kids have a nerf dart gun and have to shoot the zombie. 10 points each for arms and legs, 25 for torso hits, 50 for a head shot. Small prize at the end

You could have pumpkin decorating, silent auction, make a pillory for a photo op.....

Damn I wish I were there to help out!!

Hope this helps, Marc V.

What's your haunt's story? Most spooky houses are themed (like people have said) and some of them have a story-- like a creepy old man who does experiments in the basement and has created various creatures of the night which feast on human flesh... or something different. Usually, there's an unspoken threat to the visitors of the haunted house-- roaming creatures, zombies, spirits, creepy things... etc.

Walkways must be a minimum of 36-inches wide to comply with American Disability Act (ADA) standards. Any ramps leading into and out-of the building will need to rise at a rate of 1-foot length for every 1-inch rise in incline. (Sorry for the engineering bit... but it is something to consider.)

First thing I'd do is get a layout of the place... Measure how much space you have to work with and, on graph paper, denote where you want to have different "rooms" and "walkways"... set up some blind corners for people to hide behind.

I did a church party haunt one year a while back-- it was in a big garage-type building. There was a lot of random stuff inside for storage. We just threw a bunch of sheets on it and used some of the other items as props. Then, we had a HUGE garage type area maybe 150-feet long and 40-feet wide. Wish I'd known about big sheets of black plastic tarp or those filter fabric panels back then! I did a room of string, glow-in-the-dark yarn and streamers that hung down from the ceiling.... it blocked the view into the mad doctor's layer... where we had my husband with the PVC gurney, pulling candy out of our cadaver's chest cavity. Anyway... the point is we broke the area apart into different rooms, with something of an asylum or medical themed haunt... but you could do any theme you want-- just have some sort of unifying reason to explain WHY all the ghouls are in the haunt (because it helps spur the imagination of the viewer)... and some sort of unseen threat (because it adds the element of fear-- put an animal in a cage and you add an element of comfort. Randomly have people walking around little nooks and you add that psychological threat.)

Don't limit yourself... there is a lot of cross-over in Halloween... but keep things centrally focused. Brainstorm some ideas of what you want to do-- get some input from others as to ideas which compliment your general idea... and have fun! I'd love to get asked to put together huge haunt like this! You are SOoOoOo lucky! =D