Thread: The Sense of Touch

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I work at a charity haunt and one of our longest running "rooms" is a dark maze. It's pitch black and confusing, but once you figure out the markers (carpeting on the corners to indicate that you need to turn that direction), it's no big deal.

Late last season I was daydreaming about out dark maze and realized that the only tactile sense available to people meandering through is touch. So, why not mess with that sole sense?

Therein lies the problem. I immediately thought to make the walls tacky with flypaper strips, but as with most or every haunt, we need to pass a fire inspection and the strips burn quite quickly.

So, I turn to my fellow haunters for ideas. If you had to mess with your patron's sense of touch (and safely at that), what kinds of things would you use?

Thank you in advance

Would love to suggest sticky and slimey but I don'tnow how to pull it off.
A couple of things to consider may be:
Add alot of course sand to some frsh black paint and create rough sandpaper like walls,
if you are in a warm climate create cold walls by placing portable air conditioners behind some thin metal that conducts the cold very well.

Attached to a weak spring at ankle level, on a corner, in the dark.
A vibrating , buzzing small motor up against the backside of a wall, triggered by a worker for just a second or two scares so many(or is it just a "Startle"?) Especially if they are touching the wall just before it vibrates.
Put a sign on the wall saying:"Do Not Touch This Wall!", they can't stop touching it then!
You could even have a push button mounted on the the wall and a sugn sayung :"Do Not Push This Switch." And they would be scaring themselves, Thank You Very Munch!
Someplace I saved a huge mud-dauber's nest, an electric toothbrush inside of it could prove terrorfying to many as they edge passed it, then, "Buzzzz!"

I always like air, may it be a startle scare by a jet of air or air cannon. It could also just be some fans in the rafters to keep a breeze in a room. It will create movement if you have strings or wine cloths hanging from the ceiling. It will also create a great unsettling atmosphere. I also remember when I was a kid I used to hide in the little walkthrough me and my friends had and would shoot people with an airzooka toy, it would scare everyone.

I use fly strips all the time and they are far too sticky and gummy and if you don't lose them right away carried off because of this, you will have angry people complaining of the residue. Maybe bolting sponges to the wall? Dampening them they will feel unexpectedly cold and clammy to the touch, and the moisture won't hurt a thing.

I like all of those ideas. Thank you very much. The sand/sandpaper effect and the sponges probably stick out the most for me with our setup. I'm not saying that stuff like AC units wouldn't be superb, but with our layout, there simply isn't space.

I've always been a cat who wants to mess with all 5 senses of a person. One of my ideas that didn't prove viable was a room that assaulted the nostrils. I wanted an actor in there with heaps of rotting food etc etc to create a simply horrid stench.

One thing that worked for me along these lines (and helped me win Actor of the Night) was a little bottle called Liquid Ass. I was running my hillbilly character alongside a small covered bridge. A couple of blasts from my bottle as people approached had the worst effect on people. With a name like that you can imagine the stench. People refused to walk in the bridge and actors avoided me for the entire night. You can find it online with google, but a local costume shop had it cheap (like $3 a bottle).

I like to mess with the senses too and especially psychological (is that a sense? LOL). Smell is a powerful one to use. Get some limburger (sp?) and smear it around... it smells like vomit.

The first year that I did my hillbilly, I had concocted a nasty mixture of red onions and bleu cheese crumbles that had been in the sun for a couple of days. I smeared it all over my torso and stuck some in my shirt pocket. When people were coming towards me, I dipped my finger in my pocket and wiggled my finger under their noses.

You can watch some results. YouTube - Saikotic - Hilljack

how about using those plastic carpet runners with the spikes on the bottom and simply turning them over so the points stick out, you could put those on the walls or even on the floor for a weird feeling


on a side note, when I was a kid we had these in our family hallway and I turned the one over out side my older brothers bedroom door one night after he went to bed, I was awaken the next morning with him yelling....hahahahahaha

That's sheer evil. Superb!