Thread: Size of your home haunt

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I'm curious how large a home haunt people do generally. Like how overboard do you get

What yard space do you take up--ie. front yard only, front and back? Do you use your garage space?

So far I've only used our front yard and porch but love so much of what I've seen I'm wondering if I can expand to the garage or side and back yard. It does get contagious especially when you find or make props you love and want to incorporate.


Specific question for Terra (hope you see this post): I watched your 2008 video (had seen your front yard already, loved it, but am curious about your walk-thru part now) and am dying to know your answer. It looks like most of your haunt maze was inside and I'm wondering if you have a really big garage area or run your haunt through a basement or something like that. It's really nice when you can have a roof overhead (weatherproof) and keep things dark. You always do a terrific job and I love your creativity.

I build a 1,200 sq ft. haunt building on my front lawn.

We do our front yard and our neighbors front yard, but I would love to do a garage walk through!

I use my front yard, back yard and a 32x16 workshop that is located in the back yard. We have added a 4x32 "walk-through" along the back of the workshop that will also be used next year. We had just under 3000 TOTers in 2007, we took 2008 off! We have used our garage in the past but with the traffic we get we decided it was best to just leave our cars in there!

We started out 4 years ago in a new home developement and we were the third new house in the final phase. So we just enclosed the garage that year as a one room walk-in. It was a hit so the next year we added our side yard trail between houses it was perfect for holding fog to enter our garage from the rear garage service door, once in the garage their was a tunnel maze and out the front ya go (just a "U" type walk through from front,sideyard to Garage, maybe a 50 yard walk). Last Oct. we made out biggest expansion to date, added a 100 yard backyard trail with the works (see our photo's in my profile album). Now we still use the garage as a exit with one final scare but focus less on it and do more outside, front, side and back. People seem to love walking well lit trails more than entering into darkrooms, we learned that lesson the year before when many would not go into the dark garage.>>...................................... >>>>>>>>> Next year we will expand again and add a few hundred more yards to the trail and take them into our Cedar tree grove which will be even creepy in the daytime with more good hiding places for our actors. At night I will have 2 - 12' blue floodlights to light the trail beteween the cedar trees (may go with green floods....uumm). And the garage will have a few Bubble foggers in it for a cool bubble room exit and hit them with he leafblower in the attic again to stir them bubbles up too. Can't wait to set all this up again with the new Big Lot's prop scores this year. And Halloween on Sat. should rule along with a few other party's thrown in.

I am lucky enough to have a three-car garage. So, we parked the cars out in the driveway and made it look like they crashed into each other. I hung black landscape fabric from the ceiling to create a four-part maze. It worked out great and I was surprised at how much room I ended up with! In this video (1:30 mark) I show how I hung up the fabric and you get a sense of the scale. (The video was my showing the spider room but I also explained the walls).

YouTube - Sneak Peek Halloween 2008 - Spider Room

I weighted the bottom by curling up a 2 X 2 in the bottom of the fabric and holding it down with cement blocks throughout. To cover up the garage door openings, I hung up the fabric onto hooks in the wall above the garage door openings. As I explained in the video, I sewed the fabric like it was a curtain (a quick hem with enough room to slide in the PVC pipe). Then I cut several openings so I could slip in zip ties. Then I hooked the zip ties onto the hooks in the ceiling. Think of the zip ties like shower curtain hooks. I hope I explained it good enough. Here's the rough map of the garage maze:



A couple of more notes: The garage doors were in the open position and I hung the walls from the suspended garage doors (they had areas where I could hang the zip ties). Now, I had two lengths of walls: where they were hung from the ceiling they were about 13 feet tall and where they were hung from the suspended garage doors they were 9 feet long. The garage door opening walls were 9 feet too. To join the seams together where they met, I used large safety pins.

Here's some more pictures:

Very cool Terra! I use my frontyard, backyard and now the sideyard as an exit for my haunt. I will add a video which shows the walkthrough.


YouTube - Halloween day shot

Glass eye, love your haunt. I watched your night video too and am amazed at the quality of your props. I'm guessing you are very, very busy on Halloween night.

I would have liked to have an outdoor haunt but the Kansas winds are just too much. But, it works out in the long run. By the end of the night, I'm not a Popsicle.

This year I used the front yard, the garage and a 10x10 awning in front of the garage. This coming year I want to make a larger structure to take up the driveway and the rv parking area.

I take up most of the inside of the house, the porch and just a little of the yard. I have a friend who lives in town and we tend to take over her yard because people will actually get to see it.