Planning for 2013

I can't believe it is already June! It is time to put the Halloween planning into full gear to prepare for this coming October.  We know that the haunted hayride will be out for the year so we can put more focus on the haunted house.  Since we left the structure up from last year we are already months ahead.  I am thinking of doing a Dead and Breakfast / Haunted Hotel theme for this year's haunted house.  I know that I want the focal point to be an elevator with multiple scares on different "floors" using the pepper's ghost technique.  I also know that I have to top the closet from last year.  That was our biggest impact scare. Not a single person wanted to go into that  dark space and a few people chose to leave the haunted house all together rather than brave the dark! 

That is as far as I have gotten.  I know I want to do the carnevil party again because we had some great ideas last year that we didn't get to do as we ran out of time. I have some ideas for new group party games that I will share as I finalize the details.

Carnevil Party Pictures

Here are some pictures of the carnival all set up.  I didn't have time to take any during the party.  Stuffed animals were given for winning a game.  The ball at the Fortune Teller stand was filled with Fate cards.  If you got a bad Fate you had to go up on the Side Show Stage and act out whatever the card said.  We also had a rock climbing wall and a BB gun shooting range.  I didn't get pictures of the shooting range.

Finished Haunted House

It is so dark in the haunted house that the camera couldn't see.  In the video below I used a spotlight.  I will try to take another with a brighter light so you can really see each room.

Building a lake

We decided it would be fun to add water to our haunted house.  There was already a plan to enter a cave so why not have to cross some dark water on a tiny bridge to get there.  The cave idea was created because half of our haunted house is under a metal car port and the other half is outside of it.  Since the car port has walls down part of the side you have to duck under the wall to exit.  This makes for a great cave entrance.

We started by finished the walls to the floor with plywood.  We rounded out the opening with the plywood and later covered the door with lots of Styrofoam to save the heads we are sure will make contact.  We outlined the water area with logs and wood we had on hand and screwed them together well.  There will be a lot of pressure on these from the water so they need to be well connected.  We built our bridge out of wood we had on hand.

The framing is built and the tarp walls are going up. I forgot to mention in the video that we are covering the tighter walkways with cardboard before we put on the traps just give a little added protection for people who will be bumping into them.

Haunted House Day 4

Its really starting to look like something now!  Just two weeks left till the party.

Haunted House Day 3 - How its built

We are well past half way in building the walls for the first building of our haunted house.  I thought I would take  this opportunity to show how we are doing it.  We started by lining up the first row of pallets and screwing them to each other.  This gave us the basic building design.  Because the walls were all screwed together  they would T off of each other and this kept the walls upright.

Once we had the whole building set up the way we wanted it it was time to add the second row of pallets.  First we cut short pieces of wood and screwed those inside the existing pallets like this: