Haunted houses for fun and for real

Haunted houses hold fascination for nearly everyone, especially around Halloween. Real or claimed to be real haunted houses can provide significant food for thought although they are seldom any scarier than a trip to the grocery store. If you want a haunted house experience for Halloween this year the first thing you might consider is trying to find a house that's haunted in your local area, but if you want a haunted house of your very own, you can try using some spooky music, lighting and props to send a chill up your neighbor's spine.

Start by considering your lighting, replacing outdoor lights with colored bulbs or even black lights can cast an eerie glow around your home. Try green bulbs for out in the yard, red bulbs for closer to the house and black lights inside. If you add in those black lights, you'll get the full affect from your guest's costumes which often feature colors that glow under black light. Consider stringing some of that fake spider webbing around the area of the light bulbs to help cast spooky shadows and add to the ambiance. Strobe lights in the bushes and in upstairs rooms can look very freaky and you will also find that yard torches can give a very "realistic" haunted feel to the area surrounding your haunted house. Just please be careful not to burn up any of the kiddies.



A grave yard scene in the front yard can be a great addition to any haunted house. Make some head stones, string spider webbing in the trees and toss a few assorted body parts around. If you can get a fake skull or two, those will make your grave yard look very authentic. You can make quick fake headstones with plywood and cardboard or you can try finding boxes the right sizes and then paint them mottled gray and white. You can add clever epitaphs to your head stones such as: Cher E. Bom; Rest in Pieces, or something like that. Try going to Halloweenshire.com and take their little tour for ideas about how a haunted house might look.

Eerie sounds are a necessity for any haunted house. Spooks, ghouls and goblins have something to say you know. If you are able to have multiple sound sources going at the same time, consider having pipe organ music playing over the broad scene with assorted screams,moans and groans coming from multiple sources. Keep the volume low enough so that the source of the sound is difficult to identify yet loud enough to be heard. You can get some free for the taking Halloween sounds at ilovewavs.com or try Curly's spooky Halloween sounds .

If you have a bottomless Halloween budget you should consider buying or renting a fog machine. Having a layer of rolling fog over your floor will really impress your guests. Fog also provides cover for little icky things that you might have crawling around such as a bloody wig draped over a sneaky little radio controlled car. From what I've heard, wind up mice absolutely thrive in fake fog.

Props, props and more props, that's what every haunted house needs. The special touches you can add such as your very own charred corpse will bring the whole project together. You can also reap great benefits by having plenty of fake blood on hand ...a severed hand that is. For the crowning touch to your entire haunted ensemble, you really do need to have a head in a jar to warmly welcome all your guests. Use the ideas that I have rounded up here and use your imagination to come up with ghoulish contraptions of your own. I haven't even begun to "claw" the surface of the possibilities. Please make your best haunted house creations and report back to us about what your guests enjoyed the most.

You'll do it... if you know what's good for you...heh heh heh.