Content

• Steps
• Method 1 of 3: Make a Plan for Ghosts
• Method 2 of 3: Create an eerie atmosphere
• Method 3 of 3: Attack by surprise
• Tips
• Warnings

A haunted house is the perfect way to celebrate Halloween or scare guests with a scary ghost.Turning an ordinary living space into a haunted, blood-curdling home will take creativity, hard work, and planning. If you want to learn how to make a real haunted house, follow these simple steps.

Steps

Method 1 of 3: Make a Plan for Ghosts

1. 1 Organize a haunted path. Before you start preparing your home, determine what guests will see. Are you decorating the area around the house or are you concentrating the whole nightmare in the house itself? Will you decorate all the rooms or highlight a few key rooms and the hallway that they will go through? Here's what you should consider:
   • A haunted house can be as big or small - it's up to you. You can decorate the entire house or focus on key rooms - in the same garage. A series of concentrated rooms can scare anyone, because a person will know that a hiding ghoul is waiting for him just a few steps away!
   • When you have everything laid out, think about the mood you want to create. Will it be a house that makes people laugh or scare?
   • Think about who will follow the ghost path. Will the group be composed of children or adults? This will also determine what you place in the house.
2. 2 Get the support of your friends. It is almost impossible to cope with such a difficult task as making a haunted house on your own. Friends will help not only decorate the house, but will even accompany and intimidate your guests. Here's how friends can be helpful:
   • They can dress up like ghosts, and at random times will grab guests when they least expect it.
   • When there is eerie silence, friends may shout something out or make noise.
   • They can help "escort" guests to different haunted rooms and organize different activities and games.
   • If you don't have friends willing to participate, hire actors.
3. 3 Come up with a theme. The more specific your home is, the more intimidating it will seem. Decide if you want a traditional haunted house, a serial killer house, an insane asylum, or an abandoned hospital. The theme will set the scenery. You can also choose something cute for the theme, but with scary elements hidden in the details. Guests do not expect anything terrible from a sweet and innocent house. You can only decorate one room.
   • If you want your home to look authentic, come up with a story about why it is inhabited by ghosts. Can an old lady rest here, whose husband has disappeared without a trace? Or was there a family that was brutally murdered in the basement?
   • Tell your guests a scary story as soon as they arrive.

Method 2 of 3: Create an eerie atmosphere

1. 1 Create a spooky effect with lighting. Do not turn on a lot of lights in the house, otherwise guests will be too calm. They will also understand where your friends are hiding. If the house is gloomy, guests will be very stressed and have a great time. Just turn on enough light so people don't stumble. Here's how you can use lighting to create a ghostly effect in your home:
   • Take guests into a very dark room, give them flashlights, and let them look for a way out.
   • Replace your regular bulbs with green ones and let them shine dimly throughout your home.
   • If you have ordinary chandeliers, hang them with cobwebs and put them inside the rubber bats.
   • Let the guests put on blindfolds in one of the rooms or in the corridor and walk by touch. Make sure it doesn't bother anyone.
   • Turn on a spotlight under cobwebs or fake nasty insects to create a creepy shadow.
   • Hang the furniture in black cellophane bags to reflect the trapped light gloomily.
2. 2 Take advantage of special effects. Take advantage of mirrors, dim lights and smoke to get lost. These effects will shock and scare them at every turn. Here are some special effects you can add to your home:
   • The mist dispersing unit is your friend! It can be purchased for 1000 rubles, and it simply has to be in the haunted house. Because of the fog, you can't see anything, so the guests will have a faster heartbeat.
   • Put strobe lights in one of the rooms for a dramatic and slow-motion effect to plunge everyone into madness.
   • If you are going to turn on a dark light in your home, write scary things on the walls using neon spray paint, as if some crazy person left these signs. You can write "HELP!" or "RIP", or draw thick lines that will spread like blood!
     • Spray paint on cardboard or something you can wash off later.
   • Use a household water spray to create a mist that guests will walk through.
3. 3 Don't forget about the scary sounds. The sounds in your home will scare your visitors and keep them on their toes. The trick is to play them at the right time and not too often, otherwise the guests will not be surprised. Here's how to create sounds like this:
   • Place a few coins in an empty tin and tie a string to it. Have your volunteers shake this can from time to time.
   • Play and play a recording of different scary sounds in all rooms. In one room there may be the sound of a chainsaw, and in another, a woman screaming.
   • Your volunteers can rush around an empty room from corner to corner, making scary sounds.
   • There is nothing worse than silence. Choose moments when there will be deathly silence in the house - this will make your guests even more scared before the next time something is heard.

Method 3 of 3: Attack by surprise

1. 1 Seek help from volunteers. There are many ways your friends can surprise and scare guests. Here's what they can do:
   • After the deathly silence, one of the friends will suddenly jump out and scare the guests. For example, a ghost will jump out of the closet.
   • Let one of the volunteers grab the guests by the shoulders. Let him do it slowly so that the guest thinks that another visitor is making fun of him.
   • Bring guests to the dark room. And there your friend will light a lantern under his face and laugh menacingly.
   • Your buddy can follow a group of people until one of them guesses that someone is following them.
   • A volunteer can change into the costume of a famous horror movie hero, for example, as Freddie or Jason.
   • One of the doors in the house should be hard to open - let your guests try to enter it. Guests will try to open it again and again, and when they despair, a ghost will suddenly open it.
   • Not as frightening of blood as the effect of surprise. Blood is already a hackneyed topic, and fake blood on the floor in a haunted house will not cause any reaction other than yawning. However, if you prepare a “victim” that is dead and lying in a pool of blood, your friends will be frightened if she suddenly jumps on them!
2. 2 Prepare spooky events for your guests. If you want your haunted house to be more funny than terrifying, then organize creepy events in different rooms. For example, such:
   • Fill the tub with cold water and place the toy snakes in it. Drop a few coins on the bottom. Inform guests that they cannot proceed further until they reach for a coin.
   • Instead of just grabbing apples out of a bowl of water with your mouth, cut the apples out so they are skull-shaped!
   • Peel off the grapes and place them in a bowl. Cover it and ask your friends to take turns shoving their hands inside, feeling and talking about what the contents look like. Correct answer: eyeballs!
   • Place the chilled spaghetti in another bowl and let the guests feel it without peeping. This time it's a bowl of worms!
3. 3 Play a trick on the guests. Here are some ways to scare guests by pranking them when they least expect it:
   • Arrange a mirror focus. Take guests into a room with nothing but full-length mirrors covered in cobwebs.Let them look around for a couple of seconds, and then a goblin or a ghost will jump out on them!
   • Place the coffin in the center of the room. Give your guests some activity to keep them in this room. And then, just before they leave, a "skeleton" will jump out of the coffin!
   • Install multiple mannequins throughout your home. Let the guests mingle with these dolls and then jump on them when they least expect it. This works great when entering or exiting a house.

Tips

• Spray red paint on the mirror as if it were blood. Or drip wax of a red candle onto the mirror and white candles.
• Start a few weeks before Halloween so you have plenty of time to rehearse.
• If you want to achieve the look of a "abandoned" haunted house, spray white paint on the furniture and tape the windows with "plank"-like tapes to create the look of boarded-up windows.
• Before running for props and decorations to the big Halloween stores, check out local grocery stores for affordable, high-quality decorations and props.

Warnings

• Don't use real candles. Remember, a haunted house is an element of surprise, and if your guests are really scared, they might bump in or knock candles out and start a fire.
• Make sure there are no pregnant women, old people, small children, claustrophobic or frightened guests among the guests. Ultimately, your home should be fun and not panic-stricken so that no one gets sick.