Topic awaiting preservation: Help me with my spook house

I am in charge of a spook house for halloween and could sure use some ideas on how to spook some people. Its an outside fenced area which measures 14 to 16 feet. Am going to enclose it with black plastic from hardware store. I will have a dummy hanging from a tree and a corpse laying in a coffin that I have on a table and pull up with a string when passed. Have some dummies with ugly mask and thats it.

Thanks in advance for help.

oh, i loved haunted houses when i was a kid. i'd suggest a table where people can touch stuff...like a bowl of brain matter (bowl of slimy macaroni) etc.
a decent site for tips would be HauntGuide.com

also, if you're going to do treats lil pails of dirt (ground up oreo's) with worms (gummie worms) are great! spider cupcakes are nifty as well. marshmellow ghosts... you should be able to find loads of stuff if you goggle

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Cell 1007::

I remember getting a little freaked out by a transparent jello in the shape of a brain with a light shining through it from behind when I was little. Make sure to have some dark little corner where you can have something/someone pop out unexpectedely. Sometimes something dropping from above is better though, they're always expecting things to pop out from around corners. *tries to remember other halloween gimmicks..*

Hrm, seem to have forgot all the good ones. mleh.

-Xel

jade: Find a friendly butcher and get a few bags of entrails and heads and string them up in the trees. Also get a large heavy sack and soak it in animal blood (or red food dye) and drag it along the pavement (sidewalk). Also think about generating ultra low frequencies as these can (allegedly) induce terror and occasional loss of bowel control.

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Heh, I just thought of a Silence of the Lambs "strung up like an angel" thingy. That scared me when I saw it. Hmm...According to Marylin Manson, on the Resident Evil DVD (he did music), ultra-low frequencies can induce terror, and his original soundtrack originally had them, or was going to, or something, but someone made him not use them.

Thanks so far. Good ideas.

What age groups are you trying to scare here?

:::11oh1:::

^^ Yeah, because your scaring the shit out of me ~!!!

21 years & up. Its going to be at my house. Looking at about 35 people invited. We are the kind of family that loves the errie scary. We always look for the horror flicks at the video stores. I like the gothic scary ghost and vampire ones In fact, this may sound weird but love to check out the cemeteries, checking the gravestones, especially on cloudy cold days. One day I dressed in a black long dress and with my long black hair I looked really vampy. We decided to have some fun and took photos of me on and around the gravesites. It was so funny.
Anyway we always really have fun with halloween. If the spook house looks like it might be a really good one I might invite people from the neighborhood and charge an entry fee.



[This message has been edited by jade (edited 09-24-2003).]

aahh... thought this was for the kiddies! so forget the gummie worms and oreos LOL

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Cell 1007::

Deep, deep, darkess. With lots of undefinable sounds. Nothing freaks people out more then their own imaginations and the unknown. For people that age there isn't too much that is really going to scare people. They know you won't hurt them. You could plant people in the group, have them get in a fight and shoot each other or something. That'd the groups attention. Otherwise, I can't think of too much. For little kids peeled grapes really do feel like eyeballs. And the slimy macaroni is pretty good for brains. Spiders and bats always work, if they are real enough.

Macroni for brains in a pot. Thats a good one.
I like to get spooked myself at my age. I think some adults do. I guess mostly women. I was thinking of dressing up like a little old lady on a rocking chair like Normans mother in Psycho and pulling out a knife. I was thinking of using a stobe lite. Some people are afraid of old ladies.

[This message has been edited by jade (edited 09-24-2003).]

[This message has been edited by jade (edited 09-24-2003).]

I personally like the fake blood thing...easy ot do by mixing a whole lot of red food dye and corn syrup and a few tablespoons of smooth peanut butter (sounds weird, I know, but it thickens it up to just the right level and gives it that iron-sheen)

how about you lock 'em all up in a dark room, with nails sticking out of the walls at random intervals.

the floors could be covered with crunchy stuff, and the walls covered with slimy stuff.

play some low frequency music, and they'll be crapping themselves.

Yeah, for adults probably the single best thing you can do is have one or two "plants" in the audience, and have them actually get "killed," as realistically as you can manage -- and not by each other, by the haunted house itself. Makes the rest of the group think "well, it was just an act... ... right?"

Cell 1250 :: alanmacdougall.com :: Illustrator tips

Go to the local sound&light rental company and get yourself a smoke machine and a ventilator. The smoke machine should put out smoke randomly (some have a program for it others have a wireless control you can put in your pocket). Set the ventilator in front of the smoke machine to spread the smoke. Also if you a have an airco set it to 15C (not very cold but uncomfortable enough to scare them).
If you have a FM/AM radio put it on AM and look for very distant transmiting station with a lot of noise/static an with a strange language. Change some lightbulbs with dark blue or red ones, make sure no one but you can put on the 'normal' lights. Visit the local junk yard and pick up an old tv. Test if its broken enough, the picture should be black and white or bad colors and scrolling slowly from the top to the bottom or from the bottom to the top. Get an old VCR and put a bad old horror movie with lot's of high contrast imagesand long slow scenes in it.Turn off the sound. If you have a video cam you could hide it somewhere and connect it to the broken tv. So they can see they are being watched.
Send the people some scary but innocent stuff anonymously two days before the party.
Make sure you are not visible until all guests have arrived(hide in the gartden or something) and leave the door open so they can get inside.... Turn on some of those relax/inspiring/meditional/ 'whale music' cd's put it on shuffle and constant repeat. Your house will be be very strange with all these sensations and strange is scary so people will be a bit nervous. IF you could at some strange odor to the air it would be even better.

Afterwards put pictures online.



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"Art has to be forgotten. Beauty must be realized."
Piet Mondriaan

you want to really scare the shit out of people all over the world?

Have synax host an "extravaganza"... that'll have their stomachs grumbling...

Jade: You're not the only one who has visited cemetries. My mate and I during a few years ago visited the local cemetery and just sat there watching what would pop its head up or from around a gravestone. But nothing happened, we just drank our alcohol and smoked. Reckon you could show us those pictures of you in the cemetery?

GrythusDraconis: That's a fricking awesome idea about the people shooting each other!

My adice to you Jade, going with GrythusDraconis's idea here, is to do something that people wouldn't normally expect at a Halloween party. Everyone is going to expect shit popping up, or things dangling. Think to yourself..."hmmmm...what would I expect to see at a Halloween party?" Then think of something opposite to this. Just some random thoughts here you could have:
people on the outside of the house banging against the windows really loudly
somebody removing the roof tiles (if the house has any) during a quiet moment at the party and then walking around up in the ceiling.
you could go a bit fancy smancy and do a newspaper cover in Photoshop or whatever and make it look like there has been all these murders in the area and then when they hear weird noises and shit, they might think back to the newspapre article.
pesonally i love the idea (if you've seen 28 Days Later, you might know what Im talking about) where you have these people just burst into the house from nowhere and go skitz spewing up blood. You could have some people in the party crowd who are expecting this and get strangled by them, acting all freakd and stuff.

...as I said, random thoughts.

I did something similiar myself at a Halloween party last year. The bloke who organised it didnt even tell me to do it, I just did it off my own back. We went searching in groups in these woods for a "human head". Because I didn't know anyone there, everyone else teamed up with their friends. So I ran through the bush, running past peopel and brushing their arms. Shit...it was a whole lot of fun!

"You know you have been doing 3d too long when you walk into a church and think, "God, the polycount of this place must be huge!"

Jade: I think you should make sure that it is super dark, and if you could record a CD, and get the timing right, record soft sounds, like the idea of a whale CD, then at random intervuls change it to something loud like a scream or a bang, and flash the lights, people are not genuinely terrified easily, people _are_ frightened easily, and being constantly frieghtened can lead to terror. Using the enviornment is also important, maybe wet the ground to make it muddy, something unexpected like a rocky area. Things like that. And yes, to continue the request, make sure you post pictures of the event , it would be awesome to see how you do it. And whoever suggested peeled grapes is right, they are just plain nasty. x_x

"The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood."

There are certain bright, flashing lights you can get that you can hook into the bass channel of a sound system, and they turn on and off in time with the base beat...you could do something similar to that to make the light flash when the sound suddenly gets really loud.

These are super ideas. I am getting really excited. I decided to use real people instead of dummies for props. I am going to fool people into thinking they are dummies and then have them move. I bought a cd with all kinds of scary sounds like screamig and moaning. Iam going to set up a Linda Blair bed and do a devil scare with throw up.

Psychological things are great... Find a friendly cop that can rush onto the scene when someone is found dead and have him interrogate! Ok thats pretty unrealistic. The dark is a good thing... Maybe while everyone's in the haunted house, sneak out and pull the fuse, and then have one of the actors (erm I mean dummies) pop out and grab people...

Really liked the idea on making an accidental death.

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"The Mystery of Life"
Vol. 841, Ch. 26
"All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu. This is the truth! This is my beleif! ...at least for now." - Chrono Trigger
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Remember that things jumping out of dark corners and going "BOO" are a lot less scary to adults that things falling out of dark corners in their direction ... silently ...

small furry things and slimy things surrepticiously swapped for glasses left on the floor next to the furniture .... someone reaches down for their drink ... you got the rest ...

hide the horrible ... suddenly finding something under a cushion is a lot worse that seeing it "in yer face" as you walk in ...

hands, or whatever, sticking out from the crack between the setee back and the settee seat cushions (you know - where all your small change vanishes to) ...

trailing whispy things hanging down where they will brush across peoples faces ...

theatrical blood capsules (available at any theatrical suppliers and most joke shops) ... you'll look great as you say "hello" to your guests and a great glob of blood runs out of your mouth and down your front ...

and on the subject of joke shops ... see if you can find "blood soap" and "black hand soap" ... both look like normal soap, and even work like normal soap ... until you wash your hands ... leave them in the loo ...


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