The day of ghosts and ghouls is nearly upon us, and it’s time to start preparing your home for All Hallow’s Eve. Here are some tips and tricks on how to turn your home into a spooky haunted house and be the hit of the neighborhood this Halloween:
1. Transform your front yard into a graveyard
No haunted house is complete without a spooky adjoining graveyard. Grey paint and Styrofoam boards are all you need to create your own headstones, which you can place haphazardly across your front yard. To make your graveyard even more eerie write the names of your friends on the headstones with a personal epitaph, giving them an extra scare as they enter your haunted abode.
2. Ambiance
Eerie music and lighting are essential to any good haunted house. Play a Halloween themed CD throughout your house, as well as on an outdoor speaker to set an ominous mood for incoming visitors. While you want your haunted house to be dark and dimly lit, candles placed strategically throughout your home help create an atmosphere of mystery and suspense.
3. Special Effects
No haunted house is complete without a smoky witch’s cauldron. Place dry ice in a large cast iron pot to give the effect of a witch’s secret brew. Rent a smoke machine if you want to take your haunted house to a whole new level of ghostly scariness. Also, place motion sensors around your home to activate sounds, lights and special effects to catch your visitors off guard and get the screeches you’re looking for!
4. Decorations
Cobwebs, caution tape and carefully placed mirrors are a simple way to add an eerie touch to your haunted house. Stop by a Halloween store and see what decorations they have in stock. It’s also easy to create your own scary Halloween decorations at home. Add a few drops of red food colouring to a jar of water and throw in different fruits and vegetables that look like human organs. Cabbage or cauliflower can often pass as a brain, grapes for eyes, and fennel bulbs with the fronds cut off to resemble a heart.