This is a brief tour of our Haunted House for 2009, which we set up in our garage. We took this video opening night (the week before Halloween—we're also open the Friday before Halloween, and of course Halloween night). This is our second year having a haunted garage, though we've been collecting props and decorations for about 15 years. Last year we really got into building our props. So, in 2008 and 2009 we made the werewolf out front, the monster-in-a-box (the box with the flapping lid and red lights), the bottomless pit, the big tombstone with "Beloved" on it, the cocooned body in with the spiders, all the bottles and the "Acme Labs" sign in the lab with the mad scientist, and the PVC-pipe frame for the walls of the maze. We've also built a few other things not shown, including, sadly, a great 9-foot tall façade that says "Demented Dungeon" and "abandon all hope ye who enter here" that normally goes just outside the garage door; we had to take it down because of the wind. (We have a few photos here: www.whitfordjones.com ) We hope this inspires others to have fun and try their hand at prop-building for Halloween. We got a lot of ideas and plans from the internet, naturally. Some sites that were very helpful to us include: www.hauntproject.com www.unclebinleysroom.com www.halloweenmonsterlist.info www.creepcrafters.com www.hectorturner.com www.halloweenpropmaster.com www.spookyblue.com www.halloweenforum.com (esp. Terra!)
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Love the floating ghost over the tombstone–nice combination!
Wow this is nothing but a bunch of Wal-Mart crap wrap up as a haunt! Really a blow up spider! Next year I’ll just video my morning movements and submit them! This home haunters contest is just a pile of shit!!! If you win for this it proves that social networking is alive and doing well! Good Luck!
I didn’t put this up to win a contest, but to share with friends and family across the country who couldn’t visit for Halloween. Winning the contest would be nice, but it’s not the goal. You are entitled to your opinion, but you missed the point. The average age of kids in our neighborhood is under 10; if it was too scary, no one would come and all the work would be wasted. As for the Wal-Mart put down, read the info; we built a lot of the props. Some are store bought, but none of it is crap.
Thanks much! that was one of our favorite parts, too. Building the tombstone was the biggest project this year.
Thanks! We unfortunately live in a little corner of our neighborhood and don’t get much traffic by default, so we had to try to advertise by word of mouth. Also, our haunt keeps us so busy we don’t get to get out and see other haunts in the area.
Thanks. We like the animatronics exactly because they aren’t too scary (our target age is 8-12, but we gets lots of 5 and 6 year olds) and they look good (meaning realistic) from a distance. We get too much wind in our area to have much outside, so the witch helps draw people in.
Perhaps pecos5150 is in the contest and not doing well and feels it’s unfair. I know we got a head start on views because we put the video up a week before anyone else (because we were open the week before Halloween to drum up visitors by word of mouth). I think the PotC video is going to win, though. They’ve been gaining visitors at a steady clip and have recovered from the drop in ratings we all got when the contest got into full swing.
I think the creativity in all the entries has been fantastic. The entire reason for having contests like this is to allow home haunters to see each others work. This has been a success. However, it is unfortunate that some people have felt it necessary to attack others rather than celebrate their own successes.
I reviewing the video several times I see a lot of good work went into the garage and yard, but it lacks unifying elements. A lot of the objects don’t appear to relate to each other like the sphinx and the werewolf, which just adds to the confusion. The same goes for the placement of the objects like the bats and spiders(webs). It looks like “Oh, were should we put this, here’s a corner”. Maybe an approach of less is more would be better. Good luck next year, and ignore the negative comments.
Thanks nbrandt8 for the comments. I think the editing of the video may have made things look more jumbled than they were. I had to trim the video mercilessly to get under the youtube size limit. There were actually 7 or 8 rooms with dividers in between, so the spiders, for example, were in their own small room. I can’t find anyone willing to be an actor in my haunted house, so each vignette has to stand alone, and there’s no unifying story. (Alas.)
Congrats!! Glad to see someone else picked up on Pecos…I blocked that user from commenting on my channel after seeing the trend too. I think it’s a made up account because there’s no videos to that user account. I wanted to see what a jerk would make to slam others so much?
i love your house its awesome
what kind of lights r u using to make lightning
effects like that?
i’d love to have that for my house
@stargazer637 Sorry not to reply sooner! The lights for the lightning are yard lights you can get at Home Depot. They’re plugged into a lightning controller. It takes input from a CD player (playing thunder sounds). When the thunder crashes, the controller powers the lights to match. A mono controller (w/ thunder CD) is $130 at MonsterGuts. They have stereo and 4-chan, too. The stereo effect would be cool, but it was too expensive. Google lightning controller or lightning effects to find others.
That is very awesome! I was thinking of doing a haunted house.. And have my dog be apart of it lol.
Amazing and very inspiring!
Your haunt is incredible! Bet the kids were scared to go through. The Beloved is beautiful and the bottomless pit is something I may have to add to my haunt. Great illusion. I’m Terra from HalloweenForum saying, “Great Haunt!”
That haunt is amazing!
@ValacorDruid Thanks very much for the kind comments! Would your dog tolerate being in a haunt? I suppose it depends on the dog. One of our neighbors has a little poodle they bring through the haunt each year (they carry it) and it seems fine. I suspect most dogs would not like the lights and sounds.
@ProfessorEggflesh Thanks!
@evilportrait Thanks!
@Scaryladyvideos All hail Terra! If you think anything in my haunt is even kinda good, then Terra’s videos and tutorials will rock your world! I wish she lived in my neighborhood; then I wouldn’t have to do anything for Halloween *and* every Halloween would be twice as awesome. We used Terra’s plans for the Beloved tombstone, and it turned out very nice (the hardest part was finding a dress—that, and the hair!). Thanks so much for the encouragement, Terra! It really means a lot [fanboy squeeee!]
@evilportrait Thanks!
It would be great if we were neighbors. I’m the only one in my neighborhood to go all out for Halloween. It gets kind of lonely..heh.
@Scaryladyvideos – I would love to be YOUR neighbor! I’d be buggin’ you several times a week until the point you would have to pretend you’re not home! LOL!
heh. Well, if you irritated me too much you’d just become one of my props