Thread: Themes...I Don't Get It!

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Sad for me I don't get TOTers where I live now. My previous house was in a neighberhood that that we would get at least 300 - 400 TOTers. Really cool house built in the 20's that had been vacant for years before we bought it, it was rumored to be haunted, unfortunatly it was not. Great for Halloween! Loved It Loved It!

9 years ago we bought a couple acres in the country and built the house I am in now.

That is the year we started our Halloween parties. Over the years our guests have numbered from 70 - 100. The first two years we didn't have a Theme but by year three that is when it started, My Dad passed away in August and I didn't want to have a lot of Death, Blood, Skeletons etc. So that was the year that we did Aliens - Space Odd-isy 2001. From then on we were hooked!

We have a 350 foot "haunted trail" along the back of the property that is similar each year with stuff added, different items that are "theme" related, such as last year we did Hollywood and on the trail we had 13 of our props from our Movie game, the year before it was Zombies, so we really played up the Cemeraty at the end and added 50 gallon drums with green ooze coming out of them, Etc.

Then the yard, the house and the food try to tie in.
Every year we do a "show" Such as last year - Hollywood, We did an awards show, prizes for the Movie prop game, Good Popcorn and Movie sized Candy & Horror DVD's, Karloffs (oscars) for Best Hair, Best Make-up and Best Costume, for the person who stayed in caracter the best they won a Ham, and for my Husbands Grandparents (80+ years old) we gave them a plaque for a Life Time Achievement Award - They have been doing up Halloween big for years - Always come in a cool costume (this year they were Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson) make killer food to bring, and have helped with props. And we ended the show with the crew acting out and dancing the "Time Warp" ( Rocky Horror was inducted into the Libaray of Congress last year).

Other things like give food Movie name, and I had a DVD that played Movie trivia that I had running all night.

With Hollywood, For Costumes we had everything from Marylin, James Dean, Elvis, Liz Taylor, Audrey Hepburn & Shirley Temple to Bride of Chucky, Wicked Wtich of the West, Batgirl, Terminator, Johnny Depp/Pirate, Napolian Dynomite, Jake and Elwood Blues, Carrie, Freddy, Jason, Micheal, Larry the cable guy, one guy came in a White Tux he was "Mr Hollywood".

Just remembering this stuff is making my Heart pound and I can't wait until this year!!

Natascha, I think your party sounds great, alot of fun, and it sounds like your haunted path is a high light, I would love to have one that big to do, keeping it similar just changing some things for the theme. I have such a small area,(a camping site) I really didn't have a theme before now, this year it is kind of a mini theme. How awesome that hubby's grandparents are involved to that degree. I love it!

natascha, your group of friends sound like a real blast! Travelling out to where you live for a Costume Party. Cherish them.

Have you ever considered an "X-Files" Theme?

I'm not much on a theme for the walk through. It's all in a graveyard I guess is the 'theme'. One year I got inspired by one of the members on this forum and thought a freak show carnival would be cool to have in the graveyard. Never did it. Didn't have time to put enough effort in the props to make it work. I do have a dead clown graveyard with a hand full of clown corpses. The only part of the carnival I got done. LOL Had worked on some machines for a mad scientist lab. It's meant to be in the graveyard too. So I guess my theme would be,
"anything goes in a graveyard".

I'm with Wolfman on this one. One person screams at the bats as another one screams at the snakes. The more variety you have the better the chance your haunt will do the trick. Variety is the spice of fright. LOL

We do a theme combo. Six or seven themes throughout the garage. We’ve thought about the idea of having just one theme but decided it’s more effective to have a variety, especially since it’s not a walk thru, just one big, open area. I like that saying, “Variety is the spice of fright.” That needs to be on a T-shirt!!

Originally Posted by Wolfman

natascha, your group of friends sound like a real blast! Travelling out to where you live for a Costume Party. Cherish them.

Have you ever considered an "X-Files" Theme?

Yes I do Cherish them (although I have to admit we have so much fun planning the party & show we would do it even if no one showed up)

As for the X-Files - We did Space Odd-isy 2001 - My sister-in-law and I were WIB's 'Women in Black' and my Aunt Terry was Dr. Roz Well, My husband was an alien/android, and I had 4 Adult Nephews (and one 6 year old) who were in their Army uniforms.
We had a crash-site, with the WIB's and Dr rushing to the scene (in the van across the yard with a siren going) Alien abductions (four of my High-School aged Sunday school kids in cheap alien masks) abducted 12 Party goers, we took them on to the trail and marked them (fake tatoos) and had the Head Alien (My Uncle) tell them the story on how they needed tetrahydrozoline to get back to their planet, sent them off to find it (tetrahydrozoline is the active ingredient in Visine).

Our song was Queens "Another one bites the Dust" With Dr. Roz Well Dancing and the WIB's backing her as my Daughter and three of her friends put on the cheap alien masks and kept peeking out of the bushes behind us and then an Alien is seen and the Army Guys chase him down and shoot him and bring him back on a stretcher (with the 6 year old doing crowd control)

Then we did an autopsy on Hal (our alien) First cut we got the crowd with Silly String, then we had intestines (that Grampa made) Liver, Heart, Squishy Big Eye, and an Large Octopus.


I also remember that we did "The Twelve Days of Halloween" Around the fire with the 12th day being "12 Alien Abductions" ... Five Snicker Bars.. (sorry had to add that)

Boy as I am tinking about this I am so glad that I keep the notebooks that we use during our "meetings" because I know there is a ton of stuff that I am forgeting.

Originally Posted by bethene

How awesome that hubby's grandparents are involved to that degree. I love it!

Me Too! Yes that is the Grampa that made the intestines For Space Odd-isy, I Love being able to go to Grampa and say "We need about 10 Feet of intestines" and He said "O.K I'm on it" For the Record he made them with Sausage Caseing and colored Oatmeal.

For this years haunt we're sticking with one main theme, however we have a bunch of different scenes that tie into the storyline. For instance the guests will go through a graveyard, narrowly avoid an oncoming train, travel down a claustrophobic elevator (with plenty of surprises inside), witness a murder, see ghosts actually appearing in front of them, and step inside the gates of hell. It sounds crazy but its all tied into one main theme... so even though we don't have pirates and aliens thrown into random rooms, there's still a lot of diversity

Originally Posted by JohnnyL

I personally feel that it looks a bit tacky when EVERYTHING is thrown together, it's confusing and not as scary, really.

Putting together a theme can be much more enjoyable, it makes you work a bit more, which is fun.

As for our haunt, we go for The Haunted Mansion theme, and it's very eerie. If we started throwing in vampires and aliens, it wouldn't be as memorable. IMO.

To each his own.

I agree. We are finally buying a home instead of renting and my futeure plans for a Halloween display is finally coming to reality. I'm a huge Clive Barker and Sam Rami fan and probally have this other world feel. Creepy yet story telling.