Thread: Halloween walls for haunted house

Hello all. I am a fellow haunter, and I mainly do yard haunts outside my house. I want to step it up this year and also include some kind of haunted walk through. Can be in my backyard or even maybe my garage. I know people like to use painters plastic, but im worried about it being too flimsy and people knocking it down. Anyone have any advice or maybe a video tutorial I could watch to get some ideas. Thanks!

--Tony

We used panels made of ground cover cloth in our garage haunt, the panels were very sturdy. A few of our internal walls were also solid ocnstruction. We will also be able to re-use the panels again this year so it is economical as well.

H - The couple ways that I have done it, (in the house), is with 4x8 sheets of pink foam, covered with paper and painted to look like dungeon walls. If you get the tongue and grove sheets, they go together nicely, use a small "U" bent hanger at the top to hold together.

Second way that I did was to use 1.5" pvc and outline the area that you want to cover. Once you have a top and bottom rail with vertical supports every 6-8 ft, cover with a black mesh tarp.

These tarps come in different sizes, so cost will vary, but you can safety pin these tarps around the top and bottom and build your walls from there. Add some creepy cloth and you are good to go. In the dark, you can not see through it.

I was kicked out of the house, so had to reconfigure for outside and these walls held up great for the week or so that they were up. The mesh lets the wind go through, but is very sturdy with the pvc frame.

Make sure to buy ALOT of safety pins, as I found myself going back over and over to get more. Works well and tears down and stores easy too. Make sure to number and add "Top' and Bottom" to each of the pvc sections with a sharpie, so next year will be easy to set up.

Attached are a couple of pics of these walls. Hope this helps.

PB

PB

Here's a video of how I make my wall panels:

I'd avoid black plastic where possible. First, it's a safety hazard (quite flammable and fire inspectors hate the stuff!), and second, it's too easily damaged. When people get disoriented in a dark haunt, they often end up walking right through the stuff, or ripping it down so they can pass through.

If big heavy 4'x8' wall panels are not an option for you, Terra's method above is fantastic.

Thanks all for the replies, appreicate it.

Terras method looks great, but wouldnt that be just as easy to rip down and just as flammable as the plastic?

I like the chroma 3d thing you made Terra, does it actually work and look 3d?

I also saw a video she did with foam board between a wooden frame, I really like that idea alot, but am wondering if it would be crazy expensive for the foam.

Hi Hoopah,

I get where you're coming from. The first year we put up a painter's-plastic-walled haunt, every thing was fine until immediately after Halloween night. We had Santa Ana winds over night Oct 31. We had framed the walls with 2x4s, stretched the black plastic on the outside of the frame and covered the black plastic with scene setters "castle rock." On the morning of Nov 1 the wind was still blowing very hard when I went out to get the paper and, at first, didn't see my walls. Looking closer, the walls had been ripped from the 2x4s at the sides and bottom, but still anchored at the top. The wind was so strong the walls were parallel to the ground.

The next year my son had the idea of painting the cheapest PVC pipe we could buy, with rust looking spray paint and screwing them top and bottom every 2 feet or so. At that time they made sort of a very wide open roofed "tunnel." We had no problems with that configuration for years. That was about 7 or 8 years ago. Since then we've added roof to protect the props and we continue to have no problems with the plastic. We also started covering the inside of the black plastic with scene setters appropriate to our haunt scene.

About three years ago we started using black plastic over 1.5" insulation foam boards for the interior of the haunt - to make walls for a maze-like path. Using the Styrofoam boards/plastic walls, makes it easy to make changes each year to the maze path so the TOTs see it differently each year. We've found that two thinks are very important to keep the walls in place and the TOTs moving through safely.

1. We build ramps and platforms to eliminate steps.
2. We frame the Foam walls with 2x2s.

2011 was the first year that we replaced the black plastic roof with a silver tarp that stretches and sags less in the sun and rain. We still use "clear" plastic over the back half of the haunt .

Please have a look at our haunt albums and ask any questions that come to mind about the walls.

Hope this helps.

Here's one our better pics of the outside walls back in '10.

ltscare,

that looks amazing!

amk

Thanks amk. It evolved from two walls about 10 feet apart. Kept making it stronger to stand up to the wind and occasional rain.