How to Make Your Own Outdoor Haunted House Maze
Outdoor haunted house mazes can bring in a lot of guests during the Halloween season, and they are lots of fun to plan and create. If you have a large open space on your property such as a field or open backyard, you've already got the main ingredient to making a memorable haunted house maze experience. Once you build a twisty, winding maze, you can populate it with decorations, scary sound recordings and even actors. If you go all out, you'll have neighbors and visitors coming back year after year. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Clothesline
- Black sheets or tarps
- Hay bales or cardboard boxes
- Glow in the dark paint
- Decorations
- CD player
- Battery-powered lights
- Assorted batteries
Instructions
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Constructing The Maze
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Clear out any rocks or sharp objects on the ground in the area you want to build your maze. Mow the grass if it is long enough to cover your shoes.
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String a clothesline along the edges of your maze. If your maze area is fenced, hang the clothesline from the fence. Otherwise, use trees, buildings or other structures taller than head height.
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Hang black tarps or sheets along the length of the clothesline. This will be the wall, or boundary, of your maze.
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Sketch out the structure of your maze. You should aim to make the longest walk possible using the amount of space you have. One way to do this is to snake the maze back and forth, like a ticket line at an airport. Add a few hidey holes and passageways to other parts of the maze.
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Mark out the design you want on the ground, then stack cardboard boxes or hay bales along the lines to create temporary walls.
Populating Your Maze
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Add lights to your maze. You need enough light for people to see by, but not enough to reveal what's coming next. One option is battery-powered candles and jack-o-lanterns. Place these at about head height on your hay bales or boxes. You can also use black lights or strobe lights if you have an extension cord long enough to reach a power source.
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Play some music. Pick up a CD of Halloween sounds, then put it on repeat in a battery-powered CD player. Hide the CD player out of view so the music seems to be coming from nowhere.
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Put ghosts and ghouls in your maze. For most people, these will be the main attraction.You can purchase props from a Halloween store or online, or you can make sheet ghosts out of Styrofoam balls with white cloth draped over them. Place these at strategic places in your maze, such as around corners or through doorways.
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Fill in the maze with other props such as fake bats, spiders or bones. Peeled grape eyeballs and spaghetti brains are always a hit with children. Use fluorescent or glow-in-the-dark paint to create ghostly messages for your customers.
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Populate your maze with actors in costume. Hopefully, your friends and family will enjoy donning costumes and scaring the daylights out of customers. Actors can make a maze come alive. Give each actor an area to patrol so they don't get bunched up in one place.
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Tips & Warnings
Pay attention to safety. Every haunted house maze should have a fire extinguisher and a set of walkie talkies for actors to communicate with you. Never use an open flame near your haunted house.
If you use strobe lights, make sure you warn your customers about them, as strobe lights can induce seizures in some people.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/liquidlibrary/Getty Images
