The worst thing about being a Halloween fanatic is the tragic fact that the holiday of all holidays only comes once a year. However, with October being less than half a year away (146 days until Halloween!), now is the best time for fanatics like myself to start planning.
If you’re anything like me, you love the various haunted house attractions that start opening up around the witching season and you feel so drawn to them that you want to create your own place of horrific magic and wonder for your friends and neighbors to “enjoy.”
You might, however, be worried about the cost of such a monstrous creation. You may even worry that you simply don’t have the space to make your nightmare come true.
Well, you’re in luck.
Step 1: Plan your “Hauntspace”
Now I’ll tell you, I’ve made a lot of VERY amateur haunts when I was a young boy, but I’ve only made one in my adult life that I feel was successful. However, the things I’ve learned from that experience have taught me that the most important thing when it comes to haunting your neighborhood is the planning.
First, decide on your “hauntspace,” that is, the area that you will be turning into your haunted house, or maze, or whatever. I chose to use the backyard of the duplex I was living in at the time. The space was very limited, but with a little planning and creativity it worked out fantastically.
Next, take measurements of your “hauntspace.” This way you will know roughly how much material you will need. The yard I used was about 40′ x 40′, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but trust me, it can work with far less space than that.
After you know how much space you have, start making rough blueprints of where you want your walls to be. This doesn’t have to be 100% perfect, but the better you do it, the easier it will be later on.
Now that you have your spooky schematics planned out, and you know exactly how your haunt should look, you can begin buying building supplies.
Step 2: Building Materials and Tools
As I stated above, my haunt was outdoors, in a rather small backyard. Therefore, I am more of an expert on outdoor building than indoor, but the concept is about the same. If you are building outside, you will need the following:
Black plastic sheeting (at least 4 mil thick)
Metal or wooden posts (at least 84 inches)
Sledge hammer or mallet (preferably not rubber)
Black zip ties, ropes, or twist ties (must be sturdy!)
I was lucky enough to have a friend who is a construction worker, who loaned me a bunch of 7 ft. T-posts. They worked fantastically and I highly recommend using them.
The black plastic sheeting will be used for your walls (and ceilings if you want to keep it dark), and the posts will be used to hold them up, which is, of course, where the zip ties come in.
It is probably a good idea to buy black duct tape in order to make repairs. I ended up having to use a Sharpie to color my duct tape (which turns purple somehow) because I didn’t think ahead.
If you’re building your haunt indoors, you won’t need the posts, because you can simply attach the plastic to the existing ceilings and floors of whatever building you are constructing your haunt in.
Use your blueprints to estimate how much plastic and how many posts you will need, and remember to always buy extra just in case!
Step 3: Construction
To begin construction, use sticks, spray paint, chalk, or something along those lines to mark where your walls will be. Then, place a post on each end of every wall and at five or six feet intervals in between in order to keep your walls standing firm.
Once you know where your walls and posts will be, begin pounding the posts into the ground using your sledge hammer. The posts need to be able to withstand the wind, which the plastic will be trying to use like a sail boat, so make sure they are sturdy!
Now, roll out your plastic sheet to the distance you need for each wall and cut it. Fasten one end of the plastic, using your zip ties (or rope), and then pull the plastic tight at the opposite end of your wall and fasten it there.
Once all of the ends of each wall are fastened, go around and fasten your plastic to the middle posts (which should be at 5-6 ft. intervals).
If you use the 10 ft. wide plastic sheets, you will have enough extra to let it lay on the ground a couple of feet or so once the walls are up. I used regular tent stakes to pin theses extra flaps of plastic down, which gave my walls more stability.
This step is definitely the most strenuous, but I did the entire thing (along with the next step) on the morning of Halloween, with help from only one other person. I HIGHLY recommend starting your construction at least a day before you plan to let the world step inside of your nightmare, it will save you a lot of muscle aches and nervous breakdowns.
Step 4: Decorate!
This is what it’s all about! It’s all up to you how you decorate your haunt. You can use themes, use only homemade decorations, or go all out and buy expensive animatronics!
I chose to do a mixture of old hand me down decorations and blowing of all my paychecks on the best animatronics Spirit had to offer (including that handsome son-of-a-bitch pictured above).
As I said, this part is entirely up to you, but I would recommend using a fog machine, strobe lights and as many gallons of fake blood as you can afford.
If you are going to have actors in your haunt, make sure their costumes fit with any themes you might have, or that they just look terrifying enough to be seen within the newly built walls of your haunt.
Final Step: Remember the Reason of the Witching Season.
Building your own haunt and reading this blog means that you are like me, you love the frightening feel of Halloween. So, it should be enough for you that your haunt might bring a few more people into our way of thinking, right?
Use this experience as a way to share the amazingness (I’m aware that that’s not a word) of Halloween with your neighborhood. Ask local kids to help you with building or decorating, allow neighbors to dress up and act in your haunt, offer candy to those who are brave enough to step foot in your creation, and most importantly, never, ever, EVER charge for entrance into your haunted attraction.
Seriously, if you want to charge people so that they may experience one of the best parts of the holiday, you are building for the wrong reasons, are a complete douche bag, and are no longer invited to Halloween.
Thanks for reading!
B.G.'s Horror Blog 