I knew I needed to grow from last year, add more props. Add more sophisticated props too. That first year all I had was a surround sound setup inside the mudroom. Sure there was sound inside the room but you couldn’t hear anything from the road. I wanted to Draw attention, the best way to do so was with loud sounds. Its a haunt so its always hard trying to get bright lights involved.
I tried a few different tactics this year. I opened the garage door and put my PA speakers up to it, started playing loud zomie-isk sounds. A unique thing that I did this year was I grabbed a bunch of old clothes in a garbage bag. I poured a TON of fake blood in the garbage bag. I ripped open the bottom of it at the end of my driveway, then I dragged It into my garage. It worked perfect, left a body-like trail of blood from the end of my driveway near the road/sidewalk to the haunt. You wouldn’t have been able to walk past it if you tried.
This was the first year I was actually afraid the cops might say something. It all looked so real…
Part of the haunt that year was body bags, and lots of them. Which I made oddly enough out of garbage bags and old cereal boxes/milk containers. You form a body, tape up a couple garbage bags and it looks great. Don’t touch it though, it wasn’t that great of a prop. Either way I made about 20 of them, some for in the mudroom, some for outside hanging out of my wheel barrel and the final one I made with some yarn, put a bit more thought into it as It was hanging from a tree.
Inside I setup a small “Control Center” including a computer, a few monitors, some assorted cylinders around it. I wanted it to look like the epicenter of a zombie outbreak. On the screens I had DNA Helix’s spinning, but the window that’s a view of inside of my house I had a great projection of zombies attempting to break out. Overall it was fairly Cheesy, and I knew I could do better, but it worked and added the effects I wanted.
I was able to use the white clothes all over in the haunt, covering up “Bodies” these can be used to hide actors or props. One of the first animatronics I bought ended up being a step pack activated zombie. God it was terrible but I didn’t have the time to redo it, and it still worked for the effect that I wanted.
The turnout was much more than the previous ear, word of mouth spreads quickly. Overall the haunt was a success. I was left feeling I wanted to do more on a much bigger scale. The end of that year marked the beginning of something much, much bigger.
As always stay scared my friends.
Author: Kevin Butler
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Aeternum Vale Attractions 