How to Create a Mad Scientist Halloween Event
Decorating the yard and/or garage for a Halloween event can be a great experience for everyone involved. One idea--a Mad Scientist Lab--opens a world of scary possibilities that guests will remember for years to come. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Room or garage
- Large, clear jars with lids
- Food coloring
- Water
- Colorfast colored drawing pens
- Shelving, cabinetry and/or tables
- Lab beakers and test tubes
- White lab coat
- Kitchen utensils, household and garage items to simulate lab tools and supplies (use fake items when children are involved)
- Dark fabric (about 10 to 20 yards)
- Fabric dye
- Tacks with hammer and/or staples and staple gun
- Black lights
- Dry ice
- Smog machine (can be rented at a party store)
- Halloween CD
- Fake cobwebs
- Fake blood
- Cauliflower
- Green grapes
- Pasta
- White sausage
- Fake severed body parts
- Rubber snakes, spiders, rats
- Fake skeletons
Instructions
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Gather the equipment and supplies needed for the lab. Collect enough large clear jars, with lids, as needed to hold planned lab “specimens.” Borrow or purchase lab beakers and test tubes with stands to hold them. This type of equipment can be found at stores that carry scientific supplies as well as toy stores with an extensive science section. Purchase, borrow or make a white lab coat for the mad scientist. Gather kitchen utensils and other household and garage items that can be used to simulate operating tools or purchase fake operating tools from a toy store.
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Set up freestanding shelving, cabinets and/or tables to hold the lab’s specimens and books. Place them along the perimeters of the space being used for the laboratory. Use borrowed or simulated books on the shelves, making covers for them that are in keeping with the overall theme. Try titles like "Grey's Anatomy," "The Headless Horseman," "The Man with Two Brains," "The Screaming Skull" or other titles of choice.
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Cover the space to be used as the lab with dark fabric to give it an ominous and eerie feeling. (This step is not needed if the lab is to be held outside.) Dye old sheets or purchase cheap dark $1 fabric at a discount department or fabric store. Drape it around the space and secure in place with tacks or a staple gun.
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Set the atmosphere for the lab. Use black lights for lighting and dry ice or a rented smog machine to create smoke. Pipe in spooky music and sounds like screaming, moaning and cackling by way of a pre-recorded CD that can be purchased wherever Halloween costumes and supplies are sold. Set up a fake operating table with an old cot or summer lounge chair covered in a dirty white fabric that has been spurted with fake blood. Place operating tools nearby on a TV stand or other small table with a dirty white cloth over it. Spurt fake blood on the utensils and cloth. Hang, drape or sit fake skeletons around the room, inside closets or underneath cloths to simulate dead bodies. Using batting to form cobwebs over the space or purchase pre-made cobwebs from the local dollar store.
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Purchase or gather items that can be used to simulate specimens (that will be placed in the gathered jars). Use cauliflower to simulate a brain. Peel green grapes to represent eyeballs. Cook pasta to simulate the innards of small animals. Buy or make white sausage for fake human entrails. Pick up plastic severed body parts from a Halloween supply store. Purchase rubber snakes, spiders, rats and other creepy-crawly things at the dollar store.
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Color the specimens and/or water of their jars a shade that will best accent it. For example, color the jar with the brain in yellow to give it a formaldehyde look. Using waterproof colored markers, paint eyes onto the peeled grapes and drop them in water that is tinted slightly red. To make the eyes look really authentic, glue or pin on some pieces of pimento to represent tissue. Mix fake blood in with pasta and sausage and put them in jars of murky gray or brown water.
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Hang skeleton and troll or doll heads around the room or string them suspended from the ceiling (or trees, if outside). Place creepy-crawly insects and snakes around the entire lab area, suspending some from furnishings, from the ceiling, or off skeletons, the operating table or anywhere else desired.
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Assign family members and friends to dress up as ghouls, headless corpses, bodies with missing limbs and the like. Have them lie in areas around the lab like the operating table, under morgue cloths and the like. Encourage them to pop out to scare guests as they wander close by. Have the assigned mad scientist pretend to chase guests with a rubber meat cleaver.
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Keep food and drinks in keeping with the mad scientist theme. Serve finger sandwiches, body parts of cauliflower, grapes, ladyfingers and more; blood (via tomato juice or bloody Mary cocktails); entrails (pasta); or any other clever foods that can be manipulated to fit within the theme.
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Play games in keeping with the theme like bobbing for brain (cauliflower), drop the finger (using plastic severed fingers), pin the head on the corpse or any other similar games.
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Tips & Warnings
Get a local science teacher to help rig up a real lab experiment that will impress the event's guests.
Get everyone involved in the planning, execution and carrying out of the event.
Be cautious with tools, supplies and equipment that could be dangerous whenever children are involved in the event.
