CREATIVE and ORIGINAL SCENES

[AcoreMANNER]

"GIVE THEM A REAL SCARE THIS HALLOWEEN" - a guide to scaring trick-or-treaters and haunting your house, yard or party
written and illustrated by JOSEPH PFEIFFER


"THE COMPLETE HAUNTED HOUSE BOOK"
written and illustrated by TIM HARKLEROAD

those are the two books i mentioned in my last post.

I also have this really killer book on animatronics. its easy to understand

Its called..... "ANIMATRONICS" - a guide to animated holiday displays
by Edwin Wise

[badlander2000]

I love the indian idea but the only thing you can't do is the arrows.

[AcoreMANNER]

I was thinking of another cool scene that could take up a few hallways and turns where people walk underneathe cages with monsters/prisoners/aliens. It's totally do-able. Obviously just make sure the cages your actors will be scaring from are structurally fit. Since your actors will be up there, they'll have access to things like fog machine buttons, light switches, cd players, etc. for better timing and all. Plus people never expect to be scared from above.

[AcoreMANNER]

Wouldn't it be rad to have your very first hallway that guests enter into be a hallway of doors.....and only 1 door is unlocked. Maybe you could even put phrases on each of the doors like "brainwars", "unlived and weeded out", "hollow chest", "reality" and the one that opens might say "imagination". That could be the theme to a haunted house....IMAGINE , where trick or treators take a trip through the imagination of someone in the last few minutes of their life....then you could put anything you want in your haunted house (clowns, aliens, gory stuff, whatever) and it would fit the theme and make sense.

[Accipiter]

Wouldn't it be rad to have your very first hallway that guests enter into be a hallway of doors.....and only 1 door is unlocked.

You'd have to have some way to keep it from becoming a throughput killer. Maybe have an actor that stands still until they clearly can't find the right door then silently points them to the unlocked one.

[Nightmaretony]

The JBCorn books are excellent for construction, maintainence and operation, but very little in the way of scare ideas.

:P I think you should put an actor in a home-made electric chair and have him combulse, and thrash around. You could also have a strobe-light on him to add to the effet. Then the lights go off and the "Halloween" movie theme music starts playing loudly while the lights go red and fog comes from all directions. Then an actor weilding a bloody chainsaw chases them into a graveyard where zombies roam around and Micael Myers is chopping up a victim with an axe.

[AcoreMANNER]

michael myers is the man

I think theres a lesson to be learned from him...his subtle movements and blank stares are what give us goose bumps, and not so much some extravagant scenario...although Mike definately brings the heat
We can apply this scaring method to our own when planning our haunts...just remember less is sometimes more...and its cheaper too.

[badlander2000]

One of the main reasons for this topic is to not use Michael Myers because it is about outdoor haunts which is what I think nobody has picked up yet and Michael Myers is really bad outdoors.

[Djcarolina]

I perfer not to have common characters like Michael Meyers, Jason Vorhees, Freedy Kreuger Etc in my haunt. I read an article somewhere on the internet (sry cant remember where) and totally agree with it. It stated that people get a sense of comfort from things that ae familiar. Although Halloween, Friday The 13th, Nightmare etc. represent horror and death, they have become familiar in many american households and people can relate them to being "just a movie", thus taking the fear out. I like using my own horrific creations, like they say the mind is a terrible thing to waste. Which brings me back on topic. This years theme for us is "Carn-Evil" Yes a common name but thats just the theme not the name of the attraction. Our scares will play off of ones mind rather than the fear of seeing something scary. With the exception of the graveyard, a classic and staple for any haunt, all of our rooms are very dark and use camoflague as a means of scaring. One room is a now-popular theme called the "Dot Room" Many Are Familiar, if not and you want to know more then just PM me and i'll explain. The next is one with a "mask wall" where we have 20 identical masks pinned to a wall and a live actor wearing another identical mask and in all black. The actors will not scare till the last moment in order to let the minds of guests wander "when will they get me". Next is a forest scene where the mad side-show freaks hav escaped to. One, named gorilla man blends right into the brush. Finally, something new to me and an idea i created is the stripes chamber. Pitch black at first then slowly UV spotlights come on to reveal multi colored striped walls, the stripes being new fluorescent duck tape. An actor finishes the guests off as they near the end of the hallway by jumping from his wall blended location and chasing patrons with a rattle can.