Thread: Haunted Hayride but no actors

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I have two children, ages 11 and 13. They want to have their first ever Halloween party this year. We live out in the country on 15 acres, mostly woods with trails. So they have decided they want to do a haunted hayride during the party. Thankfully my hubby is a deer hunter so we already have food plot and line of sight areas cut down that will be perfect for scenes. The problem is we will have no actors. The plan is that I will be on the tractor and my husband will be the lone man out in the woods. I need ideas for scares that can be done with one person and on a budget. We are driving the fire break around the outside of the property so he can certainly beat us to each station. I am hoping for some ideas of things we can rig ahead of time that he can just release to "fly" or fall or do something. Otherwise they are going to be expecting the same costume at every turn. I don't want to totally terrify our younger members but I also don't want our 13 year olds to think its lame. I don't know where to start.

Please help!!! I so want to make this a great party for kids.

Have you ever seen The Blair Witch Project? I'm not saying that you need a Blair Witch theme, but what the movie shows is the fear of the unknown. You never see the witch or whatever is hunting/haunting them. Since you don't have actors, this might help you out. Otherwise, a lot of us are going to have to volunteer.

my first hayride,i built a little ramp that when i drove over it,it went down and pulled up a skeleton out of the ground.the ramp had a bungee hooked to it that pulled it back up after i drove over it.i had the skeleton in front of a tombstone in a cemetary scene.i had spotlights on the tombstones and where the skeleton was,i had built a small mound of dirt just a few inchs high that blocked the skeleton until he popped up right into the light.if i were you ,i would use this method in between your husband doing his thing.that would give him a little time to maybe change mask or what not.

gravity and bungee cords are going to be your friends. You can rig a zip line at an angle and have a ghost or bat or whatever slide towards the kids. this works best if it is coming straight at them and the wagon makes a sharp turn right before the flying thing would "catch" them. timing is important so you would have to test how fast the thing moves versus how fast the tractor is going. Pop up monsters can be powered by dropping a weight--attache the prop tot he wieght by a rope, or cord, run the cord over something or through an eyebolt so when the wieght goes down it pulls the cord and the prop comes up.

You can set bungee cord powered pop up stuff using gate latches as triggers. You set them in advance then relase the triggers as the kids get to the right spot.

You can also hand power some propr that we normally think of as being motorized--flying crank ghost, Axelworthy ghost, etc. Because they only have to move when they can be seen, you can work the FCG like a puppet and your husband can pull the stringers by hand. this lets you have a floating, see-through ghost but you don't have to figure out the motor because it doesn't matter.

a way to avoid the same costume being seen at every station is to layer clothing. Start with something like a scarecrow where the body is supposed to be a bit bulky and the head can be covered by a burlap bag. an oversized coat or even a bathrobe works well for scarecrows, too, and it can cover another costume underneath. The next layer can have a mask and the last layer can be make up. Cloaks and capes can cover up another costume, too.

Use sound--if you can hide speakers in the dark, you can have sounds come from different sides, in front and back, whatever at the same time.

it's fairly easy to develop the illusion that there is more than one person out there by setting up things so stuff makes noise and/or moves on 2 sides at once. also if you can add lights, especially strobe lights and black lights, you can make effects eerie easily. Timers and motion sensors are great, but turning them on and off manually works just as well--better sometimes since you can control the timing completely. Add fog--beg, borrow or buy even the smallest avaliable fogger--fogger messes with vision by reflecting light, obscuring details and generally is just creepy. If you can get even one other person, all this gets easier and more realistic.
hope that helps

These are all great ideas. Keep'em coming if you've got'em. Speaking of fog here is a question. My hubby has a bug fogger that puts out a ton of fog. Has anyone tried using the stuff made for fog machines in the bug foggers? Hubby thinks it should work but we aren't sure.

Great advice from ondeko. One of the main things to remember is that you need to get the scares up to their level; if they're down on the ground, they won't be nearly as effective. Having things swinging from trees or popping up like a catapult (but with much less force!) will work well. You can also make some dummies so as you pull up to a scene the kids won't know if any (just your husband) or all of them are alive. That is also a great distraction - while the kids are staring at the dummies, your husband can pop out at them from the other side of the vehicle.

How clean can you get the bug fogger? Even if it works for halloween fog, I'd still be a little worried that insecticide would still be blown out and you don't want anybody breathing that.

Not sure if this will help with the one person being the only haunter thing but when you said 13 year olds I was thinking how young teens can be. The idea that came to me was to use the way teens are against them. Make a section with what I would call not lame but kind of jokingly scary dummies. Something that would make the kids do what kids do and make fun of them or joke about how not scary they are. While they are busy making fun and feeling high and mighty for being unfazed by these lame scares have your husband sneak up behind them to scare them back into place. That should keep them looking over their shoulders for the rest of the ride.

I think a good old fashion ghost story about the property during the slow parts might be fun.

Originally Posted by OctoberDream

I think a good old fashion ghost story about the property during the slow parts might be fun.

YES! I think this is going to be very important. Since the amount of physical scares are going to be limited, you're going to need to put a lot of effort into "mentally" scaring them. Come up with a good, believable story and you'll have those kids freaked out!

Also, Ondeko talked about using sound. I think that's going to crucial. Wolves howling and crows are the creepiest thing you can hear in the woods at night.

Good luck, I wish I lived by you so I could help!