!44: How to Make Your House Into a Haunted Mansion For Halloween

!±8± How to Make Your House Into a Haunted Mansion For Halloween

Halloween is coming and your kids are begging you to turn your home into a haunted house. The only problem is, you don't know where to start. With today's great Halloween decorations, a few black trash bags and a lot of imagination, anyone can create a haunted house to die for. Here are some tips that will help get you there:

Outside

The experience should begin before your visitors step foot into the house. Start by blacking out your windows. Hang black trash bags on the inside of them. Hang some strings of Halloween lights on your railings or lay them in the bushes. Replace any porch lights with colored bulbs. A black light on your porch shining on some glow-in-the-dark creatures also creates an eerie effect.

If you have a porch, put some fake spider webs in the corners. You can also lay some in the bushes in front of the house. Be sure to hang fake spiders around to go with the webs! Black cats and jack-o-lanterns can also add to the ambiance of a haunted house.

Your plain old door won't work - decorate it to look like a coffin. Buy some Styrofoam gravestones to put on your lawn or make them out of spare plywood or lumber and gray paint. Get a recording of scary sounds and scary music and play it.

Inside

Set the tone for your haunted house right as the visitors step into the front door. Take some old pants and an old shirt and stuff them. Top them off with a head made from a bleach bottle and an old hat. Hang the "body" from a nearby light fixture. Place several plastic spiders and fake webs throughout the entryway to keep him company.

Close off rooms that aren't being used. Decorate the doors like coffins or cover with black trash bags. Try to secure some crime scene tape and drape across the doors. If you want to add to the horror, place someone behind the closed doors and have them jump out periodically and scare your guests.

Place a wide variety of Halloween decorations in corners throughout the house. Buy or make some gruesome props and put them throughout the rooms. Dry ice can create some great fog, but be careful to place it where it can't be touched as it can burn the skin if touched.

Hang things from the ceilings that will brush against your visitors as they walk through the house. Yarn that has been dampened can feel pretty creepy when it brushes against someone's face. If you're using black lights in the house, be sure to use black thread instead of fishing line to hang things. The fishing line will react to black lights.

Create a laboratory by filling bowls with gross-feeling food items that will represent body innards. Have someone who has a great Dr. Frankenstein voice lead blindfolded visitors through the laboratory, encouraging them to touch the different items with their hands. Expect to hear a lot of "Yuk" and "Ooh, gross!"

Once you have your haunted house set up, walk through it as though you were a visitor. Check out the Halloween Decorations and if you are 100% convinced that it is as scary and haunting as you can make it, then relax. It's sure to be a huge success!