Thread: Prop/Scare help

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Hello guys. Once again I have gotten myself in a bind. I have a haunt in the process of bieng built, I have a ton of room, prop, and scare ideas, but unfortunately opening day is coming too soon! I need to ask you all a favor. Most of my ideas will require either money or time that I don't have. So....

What are some extremely cheap and easy to make props, rooms, or scares that you have made over the years? My haunt (or rather my daughter's haunt) theme is an old abandoned house where a maniac axe-murder takes his victims and savagley murders them. My original theme was to be catacombs, but I haven't got the time to build everything, so I changed it for this year. Anyway, I have a few ideas for great easy-to-do props, room, and scares, but I need more. Can I pick your brains? Don't worry, I won't eat them

Thanks!

Dot rooms: Everything black, and either paint or use glow in the dark circles all over the area. A few good black lights, and you have a weird walkthru. A person is dressed head to toe in black also with dots on them and if they stay against the wall, the victims...er, patrons don't notice there is a person in there, and they can move up to them or lightly touch them...
You can also use this concept with masks of all types hung all over - and have a masked person dressed in all black...

The typical hallway with "spider webs" hanging down. Different lengths of heavy thread tied from the ceiling and trailing down to brush the patrons' faces as they pass, usually the string is wetted down to give a really icky sensation when it touches them. You can even have a few cheapy drop down spiders hung throughout and decorate with lots of webbing and spiders.

You can get cheap skulls and bones from places like the Dollar Tree. Having a bone room would fit with your theme, and you can use paper maché to corpse them up and scatter lots of piles about. Using old clothes, you could create previous victims tied to the ceiling or the walls in various states of decay. This would also be a good place to hide your killer to jump out and chase them or just to scare them (design a nook for hiding that isn't immediately obvious).

Lighting is really important. Low lights, using reds and greens and blues depending on the scenes (enough to see stuff by and walk through, but not bright!).

Strobe lights will intensify any effect - moving prop or not. They should be used with caution since epileptics can have a reaction from the light strobes, tho.

Sound is a must for setting the right atmosphere. Ditto on the fog machines, just be aware of overfogging in a small location - you want to have a misty look, not a white out!

One of the many things I admire about M. Night Shamalayan is his ability to just "tease" a gag. He never shows you the full creature, he never reveals the full story. He is brilliant in that he gives you just enough to get the juices flowing, then lets your brain fill in the blanks with whatever scares you the most, personally. He's a master "psycho-storyteller" because he knows how to play with your mind.

One thing you could try VERY inexpensively, would be to use this principle in your haunt by just taking every last piece of furniture in the room and putting something under two of the legs, just high enough to raise it a few inches. It doesn't have to be drastic, but if you do it just right, it will be barely noticeable, but just enough to make your eyes realize something is askew, which will automatically disarm your guests and make them feel awkward as their mind tries to figure out what it is that's not right.

From there, you can play with other inexpensive props and gags and they'll have that much more of an effect, because you've already gotten in the heads of your visitors.

Good luck!

Here is a cheap and fast way to add rust to your props. That would be fast and easy.

Rusty Sword Technique.

Frankie's Girl: Thanks, I do have plans for the spiderweb room with very dim lighting so that people can see surrounding webs as the threads touch them. Good idea for the bones. I have been searching for a way to create freshly cut body parts from papier mache.

BallstonManor: Thanks. That is a great idea! I don't furniture in the haunt but I'm sure that I can use this somehow

killer13: Thanks for the tutorial. I am always looking for a good faux painting technique. I was on another forum and saw an incredible faux paint job and want to do somthing like it...what a way to disguise cardboard walls

Originally Posted by Frankie's Girl

The typical hallway with "spider webs" hanging down. Different lengths of heavy thread tied from the ceiling and trailing down to brush the patrons' faces as they pass, usually the string is wetted down to give a really icky sensation when it touches them. You can even have a few cheapy drop down spiders hung throughout and decorate with lots of webbing and spiders.

Originally Posted by Pennywise

Frankie's Girl: Thanks, I do have plans for the spiderweb room with very dim lighting

Hey is a good one, a dark hallway with sounds of spiders playing (what ever that would be) and fishing line draped from the ceiling every so often, so the TOTs walk through they get this really creepy touch on their face and arms
AAAAHHHHHhhhhhhhhhaaaaaa!!! LOLOL

Old abandoned crazy house, eh.

I've always wondered why someone didn't re-create the room from Blair Witch Project. All the wierd writing on the wall and everything. Would be simple enough.

Also could draw some inspiration from Psycho. With "mother" and/or some taxidermy items. You can often find those at yard sales, or estate sales in less than ideal condition...which is all the better.

Some latex over some burlap can be made to look quite skin-like.


Cut in the proper shapes, could be made to look like folks had been skinned, or make 'skin suits' out of.

I did this last year-

Get some bales of hay and some cornstalks then make 1 or 2 static scarecrows but have an actor in another one and when someone walks by they come to life. Use wrap burlap around the fake faces and the actors head.

incorperate a few more live actors as prop and save a few bucks and get a bigger bang out of it...

Cool! Since I have a really small budget, the whole haunt will be run by people. There are no animatronics (well there may be a hangman prop), no timers, triggers, or sensors. Everything will be moved by human hands and monitored with human eyes. Live actors will be in most scenes.

I can do a Blair Witch room with writing on the wall, bloody hand prints, maybe a freshly chopped arm lying around. It would fit in nicely with the maniac murderer theme.

Oh, BTW, did I mention that I have such a low budget the the walls are being built from pallets? You can see them in my blog: pennywise’s Profile » HauntSpace.Com