How to Turn a Home Into a Haunted House

Halloween is a holiday of sweets, costumes, food and fright. If you are having a Halloween party, or simply want to turn your home into a frightful delight, the steps below will show you how to turn your house into a top-rated haunted house.

Instructions

1. Create a plan on paper of how you would like to have your haunted house. Getting your ideas on paper enables you to refer to it as often as needed when purchasing your props and arranging them strategically.

2. Hang jack-o-lantern lights to illuminate the horrors that you have in store for the unwary. Create a dimly lit ambiance with decorative Halloween candles in the shape of skulls or shrunken heads (available in specialty shops). The flicker of candlelight creates a dark, foreboding sense of impending doom. Enhance the spooky lighting with hidden fog machines to create that creepy, foggy atmosphere reminiscent of a graveyard.

3. Add sound effects to your haunted house. Specialty stores sell CDs that contain frightening sounds such as squeaky doors followed by maniacal laughter and the occasional scream to frazzle the nerves.

4. Include such props as a coffin, guillotine and some headstones scattered throughout your house. Make the props come alive with faux spider webs and skeletons beckoning from out of the surrounding darkness. Place a skeleton inside the coffin.

5. Place rubber spiders and various bugs along the pathway you wish your guests to follow. They feel squishy when stepped on and are remarkably realistic. A few well-placed spiders dangling from the ceiling will sustain the sensory assault.

6. Prepare food items with a slimy, gooey look. A bowl of peeled grapes can be a bowl full of scary eyeballs with a little bit of red jello added in for effect, and jello stirred slightly can become brains and various organs.