My first haunted house

[Scarefest13]

Hey guys, its my first year doing a haunted house, I am 13 years old,Do not, not take me seriously because of my age, cause trust i want to scare the crap (ALMOST litterally) out of anyone that steps into my haunted house, and guess what i am almost designing a haunted house, i am doing this with another person but i am one of the main guys. I have looked through this site and realized how amazing and how much knowledge some of the members of this forum have, i have a budget of 400$ this year i know (not much) i really need some ideas from people who are experienced in this kind of stuff, and it looks like i have come to the right place, i am aloud to use my whole house but not inside the house including: My front yard, my garage and my backyard. I really need some cheap ideas for props. My theme of my haunted house is basically doctors who work at a hospital go insane and start killing/torturing his patients. I could use some tips on Make-up, costumes, scenes, skits, pretty much anything! I have done my research and read some books but i need some people to have a discussion with me about this kind of stuff thanks guys!

[Jim Warfield]

Instead of "Doctors who kill", be really scary to your customers , be "The 13 year old boy who is nuts enough to have a haunted house in his yard!"
The main reason I say this is because as a 13 yr. old you will never be very convincing that you are any kind of a threatening persona /doctor.
Of course at your age if you are too good at acting like a life threatening 13 yr. old they might lock you up!
"Sorry for making you have to wait, I know the sign said we would be open at 7pm but then I decided to kill my parents early since they were giving me so much crap about my haunting here, but it's OK, now I can Really go whole-hog and you will see how scary this can get!"
Read my last post under the heading of haunt actors and see what I do here as far as acting and storytelling goes.
I do have quite a many advantages over you but experience doing this kind of thing is probably the biggest one, and a word of advice/warning, you will never be able to put a scare into everyone only major politicians and well known terrorists and media commentators can usually do that.
Good Luck, have fun!

[Dr. Giggles]

Dont scare him Jim. Jeeze,
How much exact space to you have to work with? I cant really help you out with design and all that and skits unless i know how much space there is exactly.

-Zackary J

[Scarefest13]

My backyard (estimate) 1,500 square feet, garage 600 squarefeet, front yard 800 square feet, and they are all linked

[Dr. Giggles]

Ok well i replied to your PM.

[Jim Warfield]

Fence it all in with good fence, put about 100 head of hogs in there , put Halloween masks on them and watch the fun!
Duct tape a cattle prodder on one hog.....

[Dr. Giggles]

400 dollar budget Jim, to fence all that ground. That would be like the whole budget!

[shawnc]

If you aren't careful that whole $400 will have to go towards walls, with nothing left for props. Be on the lookout between now and October for scrap lumber, plywood, rolls/sheets of plastic and even big pieces of cardboard.

Good places to look are construction/demolition sites, dumpsters in business areas and industrial dumpsters. Check with some of the businesses that look like they might be throwing away what you will need. Often times they will set the stuff aside for you before it hits the dumpster.

Also do a search above for PANELS, which is what most people call their walls. There are a bunch of ideas for building them, including using plastic.

[chainsawdayandnight]

I have been constructing garage haunted house for about 4 years. Last year our theme was an asylum, which is similar to your theme. For walls we used Black Plastic Tarp. And we used alot of it, just on the walls we have spent around 200$. Some costume ideas are if you go to your local medical supplie store, they might have some sort of robe that patients wear. just throw some blood on it and go scare. but for makeup just get a simple makeup kit with the colors: black, red, grey and maybe some prosthetics and spirit gum. For scenes just do normal things at a hospital such as isolation, death row, mess hall, shock therapy and etc. I would reccomend that you make some of your props. because you are not going to get much out of 400 dollars but buy a couple props and add on as the years go by. Here is a site that has some how tos-
www.scaryguys.com

Hope to hear back from you.

[OgeXam]

Just want to reinforce the point, you will not be able to scare everyone!

As a haunted attraction think of entertaining, and not scaring. Yes your goal is to scare the 'crap' out of people, but there are people who will not be scared and they go through haunts to enjoy watching others get scared and checking out the acting, skits, and props.

What is the lighting condition in your back yard... is it fenced in